Elasticity of people's support for energy price reforms

Last registered on March 03, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Elasticity of people's support for energy price reforms

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0015325

Initial registration date

February 03, 2025

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

February 05, 2025, 9:19 AM EST

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

Last updated

March 03, 2025, 11:46 PM EST

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name

Christopher Hoy

Affiliation

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-02-04

End date

2025-12-31

Keywords

Environment & Energy, Governance

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Policymakers face many design choices when implementing energy price reforms, such as how much prices should be increased, how to sequence price increases, how to provide mitigating policies, and how to balance trade-offs in the targeting of mitigating policies. To date, there is an absence of evidence about the general population’s preferences for how these features should be designed. This project helps to fill this gap in knowledge by rigorously examining this topic in multiple middle-income countries.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Hoy, Christopher. 2025. "Elasticity of people's support for energy price reforms." AEA RCT Registry. March 03. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15325-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2025-02-04

Intervention End Date

2025-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

People's level of support for energy price reforms (measured based on questions elasticity_supp2, elasticity_supp3, elasticity_supp4, elasticity_supp5 and elasticity_supp6 in the survey instrument in the documents tab).

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Randomized survey experiments will be used to measure people’s level of support for energy price reforms. To do this, respondents will be randomly allocated to one of four reform scenarios with increases in energy prices by 10, 25, 50, or 100 percent. They will be asked a series of questions about their support for this reform, their preferred timing of price increases, the types and targeting of the mitigating policies they think the government should administer, and their households’ coping strategies (see survey instrument in documents tab). Respondents will also be randomly allocated to one of three groups, two of which receive information treatments. Treatment A will provide details about the opportunity cost of lower energy prices (i.e., less revenue for other government spending), and Treatments B and C will provide details about the problems with low energy prices, such as how they primarily benefit richer households (Treatment B) or worsen air pollution (Treatment C), as well as the information contained in Treatment A.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization completed by survey software

Randomization Unit

individual

Was the treatment clustered?