Is social norms marketing effective? A case study in domestic electricity consumption

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present details of a large-scale experiment that evaluated the impact of communicating two types of feedback to householders regarding their domestic electricity consumption: feedback on their own consumption and feedback of both their own consumption and that of others in their locality.

Design/methodology/approach

Digital technologies were used to automatically measure and communicate the electricity consumption of 316 UK residents for a period of 16 weeks. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: one involving no feedback; one involving feedback about a household's own usage, and one involving a household's own usage plus social norms feedback (the average consumption of others in the locality). At the end of the study, a selection of participants took part in interviews or focus groups.

Findings

Both types of feedback (individual and individual-plus-social-norms) led to reductions in consumption of about 3 per cent. Those receiving social norms feedback were significantly more likely to engage with the information provided. However, the social norms information had no additional impact on consumption. Survey and interview data confirmed that participants from both conditions had been encouraged to adopt new energy-saving practices. The study concludes that near real-time individual feedback can be sufficient for usage reduction if it is provided in a historical format. It also suggests that the impact of social norms information may previously have been confounded with that of individual feedback.

Originality/value

This is the first time that a controlled experiment in the field of domestic electricity consumption has compared the impact of real-time social norm information with that of information that only contains individual household usage.

Citation

Harries, T., Rettie, R., Studley, M., Burchell, K. and Chambers, S. (2013), "Is social norms marketing effective? A case study in domestic electricity consumption", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 47 No. 9, pp. 1458-1475. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-10-2011-0568