Lang, Ghislaine

2020, Lang, Ghislaine, Lanz, Bruno

2019, Kandul, Serhiy, Lang, Ghislaine, Lanz, Bruno

This field experiment quantifies the impact of social norm information on the demand for indoor temperature. Based on high-frequency data from indoor temperature monitors, we provide participating households with a comparison of average temperature in their apartments relative to that measured in a control group. For more than 90 percent of participants, financial benefits of energy savings are only indirect, as building-level heating costs are shared across apartments in proportion to their volume. Despite the associated collective action problem, we estimate that the intervention induces a -0.28 C reduction in average indoor temperature. This suggests that direct monetary incentives is not a pre-requisite for social comparison feedback to induce energy savings.

2018, Lang, Ghislaine, Lanz, Bruno

This paper studies the role of imperfect information and attentional biases in the context of energy efficiency investments in rented properties and associated split incentives. We design a multiple price list experiment representing owners’ decision to replace the central heating appliance, and employ both within-subject information disclosure and between-subject variation in information provision to quantify how tenants trade-off energy efficiency and rent increases. A set of quantile regressions suggests that information on expected energy bills reduction induces around 30% of tenants to equate financial savings and acceptable rent increase. Around 20% of tenants oppose rent increase and do not respond to information, whereas tenants’ valuation in the upper tail of the distribution exceeds financial savings, presumably on account of pro-environmental motives. By contrast, information on energy bills variability dampens acceptable rent increase. Our results highlight the importance of realistic ex-ante estimates of financial savings associated with energy efficiency investments.

2017-11-7, Lang, Ghislaine

2019-6-27, Lang, Ghislaine

2018-6-21, Lang, Ghislaine

2018, Lang, Ghislaine, Lanz, Bruno

2019-6-14, Lang, Ghislaine

2018, Lang, Ghislaine, Lanz, Bruno

This paper studies the role of imperfect information and attentional biases in the context of energy efficiency investments in rented properties and associated split incentives. We design a multiple price list experiment representing owners' decision to replace the central heating appliance, and employ both within-subject information disclosure and betweensubject variation in information provision to quantify how tenants trade-off energy efficiency and rent increases. A set of quantile regressions suggests that information on expected energy bills reduction induces around 30% of tenants to equate financial savings and acceptable rent increase. Around 20% of tenants oppose rent increase and do not respond to information, whereas tenants' valuation in the upper tail of the distribution exceeds financial savings, presumably on account of pro-environmental motives. By contrast, information on energy bills variability dampens acceptable rent increase. Our results highlight the importance of realistic ex-ante estimates of financial savings associated with energy efficiency investments.

2018, Lang, Ghislaine, Lanz, Bruno

This paper studies split incentives associated with energy efficiency investments in rentedproperties. We design a multiple price list experiment representing owners’ decisions to re-place the central heating appliance, and elicit tenants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an optionthat is 30% more energy efficient. We then quantify how tenants’ WTP varies with a set ofinformational interventions. Our results show that tenants’ baseline WTP is around CHF 450per year on average (about USD 470), and that information on expected financial savingsincreases mean WTP by up to 70%. A set of quantile regressions further suggest that infor-mation on financial gains induces around 30% of tenants to adjust baseline WTP accordingly,while 20% oppose rent increases and do not respond to information and tenants in the uppertail of the distribution increase their WTP substantially. By contrast, informing tenants aboutCO2tax payments has no incremental impact on WTP.