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Tuesday's a lousy day for the mail. On Monday all the extra stuff that accumulated over the weekend shows up. On Wednesday you get the letters that people waited until Monday to send. But Tuesday is always slim pickings, which is why post office cost-cutting proposals always include a call to cancel Tuesday delivery altogether. Of course, then Thursday mail would be just as lousy. But I digress.
The generally lackluster nature of Tuesday mail is probably what led me to read more carefully than usual the one letter I did get that day. It was from the utility company and it spelled out a series of measures that I could take to cut down my energy consumption. In particular, I found myself studying the colorful graph they included comparing my electricity use to that of my average neighbor. Turns out I use 3 percent less energy than average.
This got me to thinking about the purpose in sending out this information. On the one hand, the strategy makes perfect sense. People are social animals. We rely on the behavior and attitudes of others to decide how we should act and think ourselves. So why not tell customers what the proverbial Joneses are up to in the effort to shape behavior? Indeed, a study published in 2008 found that learning about the conservation tendencies of others in the community is a strong predictor of our own behaviors, even though we usually fail to recognize (or admit) as much.
On the other hand, I couldn't help but wonder what the implications would be for someone like me. Because I had just learned that I used less energy than those around me. And conformity leaves us more likely to go along with the majority, whether in terms of what we see, how we talk, or how we vote. If I were an energy overconsumer, sure, the pressure to conform could prompt me to start using less. But as an underconsumer, couldn't the same process work in reverse, leading me to start consuming more?
Now, I'm not suggesting that people would start using more energy out of some misguided effort to "fit in." While the popular kids in junior high might have been the ones that wore certain clothes and liked certain music, it's hard to imagine a homeowner's association conveying status to the family that did the best job leaving its lights on and running the central air with the front door propped open.
But rather than some sort of perverse peer pressure, doesn't it seem possible that finding out you use less energy than average would relieve pressure you might otherwise feel to cut back? As in, Well, I was thinking we should try to lower our electric bills, but I guess we're not so bad after all.
In this sense, combining a plea to reduce energy use with a graph telling half of consumers that they're already better than average makes for a curious strategy. It's sort of like your doctor telling you that you need to lose a few pounds while sitting ringside at a sumo wrestling match. Or trying to stage a drug abuse intervention in the parking lot outside a Charlie Sheen concert.
When I looked into the research, I found that my concerns were well-founded. At least some of the time.
In a study in 2007,* researchers recorded the energy use of 290 households in California over a two-week period. Then they gave the homeowners information regarding their consumption relative to the rest of the neighborhood and continued to monitor their usage. People informed that they used more electricity than the average did, indeed, cut back in the weeks that followed. People who learned that they consumed less than the norm? They started using more.
So I was right–my utility company's letter was a double-edged sword. Sure, the normative information might lead heavy-users to cut back on their energy use. But this decrease in demand on the grid could be offset by an increase in consumption by light-users.
What should my electric company have done instead? Well, one option would be to lie–just tell everyone that they're using more electricity than average. Probably not a sustainable policy for a public utility, however. And much like the ruses of (spoiler alert!) Santa and the Tooth Fairy, the jig would be up once word got out.
An even better suggestion comes straight out of the 2007 study, namely to add to the consumption report a message of explicit approval for low energy use. That is, for residents in the study who were told that they used less energy than usual, a simple smiley-face emoticon prevented a spike in future consumption.
It turns out that all my electric company needed to do was add a ☺ to the graph they sent me. For that matter, a frowning face made the overconsumption feedback more powerful as well, leading to an even greater decrease in energy use in the weeks that followed.
It never ceases to amaze how the smallest changes in mundane context can transform human nature.
* Thanks to Sarah Gaither for bringing this study to my attention!
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