Social Comparisons in Real Time: A Field Experiment of Residential Electricity and Water Use*

In this paper, we carry out a field experiment that contributes in two important ways to the literature on how social comparisons affect residential energy and water use. First, we study a social comparison treatment that is continuous and communicated via pre‐installed in‐home displays, which are salient and updated in real time. Second, we estimate the effects of provision of social comparisons on two different resources – electricity and water – in the same experimental setting. We find that, on average, our social comparison reduces daily residential energy consumption by 6.7 percent but has no effect on overall residential water use.