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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 24th Aug 2026, 01:48:48am WEST

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Daily Overview

Session

Energy and Behaviour
Location: B005
Session Chair: Delia Niehues, RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research

Presentation 2

Private versus public information about goal setting on energy conservation: evidence from a field experiment in student dormitories

Botao Qin¹, Man Gou¹, Chenyang Xu²

1: Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, People's Republic of; 2: University of Massachusetts Lowell

Discussant: Martin Kesternich (University of Ausgburg)

Reducing household electricity consumption to lower CO_2 emissions has become an urgent priority as global warming intensifies. We conducted an electricity conservation experiment at a Chinese university involving 179 dormitories, divided into three groups: a self-set private goal treatment, a self-set public goal treatment, and a control group.

During the four-week intervention period, the private goal treatment led to a 13.24% significant reduction in electricity consumption than the control group. In contrast, the public goal treatment did not yield a statistically significant effect. The conservation effect in the private goal group did not persist after the intervention ended.

Heterogeneity analysis showed that the private goal treatment had a stronger impact in male dormitories, while no significant gender differences were observed in the public goal group. Goal achievement emerged as a key factor in sustaining energy savings: dormitories that achieved their goals reduced electricity use by 19.72% in the private goal group and 32.38% in the public goal group after the intervention. Moreover, dormitories that set high-level goals saved more electricity than those with medium or low-level goals in both treatment groups.