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Our research investigates the effects of residential energy efficiency audit programs on subsequent household electricity consumption. Here there is a one-time interaction between households, which participate voluntarily, and the surveyors. Our research objective is to determine whether and to what extent the surveys lead to behavioral changes. We then examine how persistent the intervention is over time and whether the effects decay or intensify. The main evaluation problem here is survey participants' self-selection, which we address econometrically via several non-parametric estimators involving kernel-based propensity-score matching. In the first method we use difference-in-differences (DID) estimation. Our second estimator is quantile DID, which produces estimates on distributions. The comparison group consists of households who were not yet participating in the survey but participated later. Our evidence is that the customers who participated in the survey reduced their electricity consumption by about 7%, on average compared to customers who had not yet participated in the survey. Considering the total number of high-usage households participating in the survey in 2009, we estimate that electricity consumption was reduced by an aggregate of 2 million kWh per year, which is approximately equal to the monthly consumption of 3500 typical households in California with an estimated 1527 metric tons less of carbon dioxide emissions. Because the energy audit program is inexpensive ($10–$20 per household) a key issue is that while the program is cost-effective, is it regressive? We find that as the quantiles of the outcome distribution increase, high-use households save proportionally less electricity than do low-use customers. Overall, our results imply that program designers can better target low-use and low-income households, because they are more likely to benefit from the programs through energy savings.

AbstractIn this paper, we examine characteristics that may change the susceptibility to inattention in electronic billing (e‐billing). Digitization of energy bills can increase the delivery of energy feedback and increase knowledge around conservation efforts, only when attention remains at similar levels to that of paper bills. We hypothesize that only subsets of the population are susceptible to inattention in e‐billing. We do this by estimating energy consumption for e‐bill and paper billers controlling for several characteristics of participants, homes, and weather in the City of Tallahassee, Florida. We use a difference‐in‐differences (DD) approach to estimate the effects of the e‐bill participation, which is a common approach for observational and quasi‐experimental settings. We find that budget constraints limit an individual's susceptibility to inattention in e‐billing, with lower income groups decreasing energy consumption on average by 4.4% but has no effect on higher income groups. This suggests that inattention may not occur at the same levels or for the same reasons for all members of the public. This has implications regarding the practice of policy design and communication strategies for the public at large.