The Welfare Effects of Nudges: A Case Study of Energy Use Social Comparisons

We are grateful to Paula Pedro for outstanding research management, and we thank Opower and Central Hudson Gas and Electric for productive collaboration and helpful feedback. We also thank Nava Ashraf, Stefano DellaVigna, Avi Feller, Michael Greenstone, Ben Handel, Guido Imbens, Kelsey Jack, David Laibson, John List, Todd Rogers, Dmitry Taubinsky, and seminar participants at the 2017 ASSA Annual Meeting, Berkeley, Chicago Booth, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Microsoft Research, New York University, Stanford, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics, the University of Hawaii, Wesleyan, the World Bank, and Yale for comments. We are grateful to the Sloan Foundation and the Jameel Poverty Action Lab for grant funding. This RCT was registered in the American Economic Association Registry for randomized control trials under trial number 713. Code to replicate the analysis is available from Hunt Allcott's website. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• randomized controlled trials registry entry
• Code for replication

• December 14, 2015
• October 25, 2016