Households revealed willingness to curtail during winter electricity shortages

Last registered on May 27, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Households revealed willingness to curtail during winter electricity shortages
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012277
Initial registration date
November 17, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 01, 2023, 4:49 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
May 27, 2025, 8:26 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
Switzerland
Region
Northwest

Primary Investigator

Name
Nina Boogen
Affiliation
Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Christian Winzer
PI Affiliation
Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2023-11-22
End date
2024-06-30
Keywords
Behavior, Environment & Energy
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
C93, D12, D90, Q41
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The war in Ukraine has sparked a global energy crisis. Switzerland's energy supply is also affected. While the winter of 2022/23 was rather mild in Switzerland, this might not be the case for coming winters. Thus, we design and implement a field experiment, in which we want to test the revealed willingness to pay of households for their heat pump’s energy consumption during winter electricity shortages with relatively extreme electricity prices. The experiment will be implemented in cooperation with a Swiss utility, that invites their residential customers with heat pumps to participate to the study. Our intervention provides treated households with weekly high price signals, the households then decide whether to pay these high prices (deduction form a virtual study budget) or to curtail their heat pump’s consumption and avoid some part of the high energy costs.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Boogen, Nina and Christian Winzer. 2025. "Households revealed willingness to curtail during winter electricity shortages." AEA RCT Registry. May 27. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12277-2.0
Sponsors & Partners

Partner

Name
Primeo Energie (utility)
Type
municipality
URL
https://www.primeo-energie.ch/en/ueber-uns/unternehmen.html

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2024-01-02
Intervention End Date
2024-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
(i) reduced heat pumps electricity consumption during the days with price signal (analysis of smart-meter data provided by the utility)
(ii) self-reported change of heating settings (elicited in the follow-up survey)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
A Swiss utility contacts around 2800 households selected among their customers via postal mail to take part in the experiment. This target group supposedly has a heat pump at their home (requirement for participation). Participants that registered to take part in the study are randomly allocated between the treatment group and the control group after the registration. Afterwards, all participants (treatment and control group) are invited to fill in a baseline survey by e-mail.

The intervention is incentive compatible: This means that the treated participants are endowed with a virtual study budget. Between January and April 2024 we contact the households in treatment group first with an e-mail that includes detailed instructions for the next 15 weeks. Then secondly, our intervention (sending SMS to inform them on the study electricity price, the days of validity and the cost per day for an average heat pump) provides treated households with weekly high price signals. Then the treated households can decide whether they want to pay this price for the households’ heat pump consumption (we will then deduct the monetary amount from the virtual study budget), or whether they want to lower the room temperature to reduce energy costs (we will then deduct a smaller monetary amount from the virtual study budget depending on the actual electricity curtailment). Depending on this, the virtual study budget will be reduced accordingly week by week. During this period, we do not contact the households in control group.

In May – after the 15-week study period, we invite the households in the treatment and control group by e-mail to fill in a short follow-up survey. The follow-up survey collects information on the participants’ experience during the intervention and the behaviour regarding their heat pump. Further, we get the smart meter data of the participating households from the utility. Using this data we calculate the remaining balance of the virtual study budget, which we will then pay out to the participants. Also, the households in the control group will be informed about their participant compensation pay-out.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in university office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Randomization at individual level, within the target group of the utility
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
950
Sample size: planned number of observations
950
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
475
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
It is well known that electricity consumption patterns show extremely dispersed distributions. Thus, we focus on first differences in electricity consumption. Changes in electricity consumption are less variable than levels of electricity consumption, since one part of a heat pump’s electricity consumption remains fixed over time (e.g., the efficiency level of the heat pump). This fixed component is filtered out by using the first differences approach. We use day-to-day changes. Minimum detectable effect size is 0.88 kWh/24h, the standard deviation of changes in electricity consumption is 4.82 kWh.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
ZHAW Ethikausschuss
IRB Approval Date
2023-11-17
IRB Approval Number
EA-ZHAW 2023-021-W
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-Analysis Plan_2023-11-17

MD5: be7f2e04c8de557ab8d82ad9e1f229c2

SHA1: f15807a0955e1d12ed707a63a10ab01c2a1781a4

Uploaded At: November 17, 2023

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
June 30, 2024, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
June 30, 2024, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
293 households
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
293 households
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
134 households control, 159 households treatment.
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

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Program Files

Program Files
No
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
Russia's war on Ukraine has sparked a global energy crisis. While the winter of 2022/23 was relatively mild in Europe (and energy shortages did not occur), more energy price shocks in the markets may happen in the future. This paper reports results on a field experiment regarding households' revealed willingness to turn down their heat pump when faced with the extremely high electricity prices that could be expected during future electricity shortages. The experiment was conducted in cooperation with a Swiss energy provider that invited residential customers with heat pumps to participate. In an incentivized experiment, we exposed participants to weekly price signals. We observed that the average heat pump electricity consumption of treated households was 13.7% lower on treated days than consumption in the control group. The average observed energy saving compared to the control group was 9% during periods with a low price signal and increased to 15% during periods with high price signals. Our results are relevant for the design of public policies when reacting to short-term energy shortages. During the 2022/23 energy crisis, most European countries based their policy reaction on information campaigns and voluntary measures to achieve energy savings. Additional price-based policies could help to achieve higher energy savings during future energy shortages.
Citation
Boogen, Nina and Winzer, Christian, Households' Willingness to Curtail Electricity Usage During Winter Shortages - A Field Experiment (November 28, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5037079 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5037079
URL
https://ssrn.com/abstract=5037079

Reports & Other Materials