Beyond Single-Resource Nudges: Experimental Evidence on Integrated Consumption Feedback

Last registered on August 10, 2026

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Beyond Single-Resource Nudges: Experimental Evidence on Integrated Consumption Feedback

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0019324

Initial registration date

August 07, 2026

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

August 10, 2026, 4:46 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Italy

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Jacopo Bonan

Affiliation

University of Milan

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2024-01-01

End date

2026-06-30

Keywords

Environment & Energy

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Q5, D9

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Behavioral feedback interventions typically promote conservation by providing separate reports for individual resources such as electricity, gas, and water. We study whether integrating this information into a single communication improves household conservation. In collaboration with a large Italian multi-utility, we conduct a randomized controlled trial involving approximately 190,000 residential customers who already receive digital Home Reports for at least two resources. Customers assigned to treatment continue receiving the standard resource-specific reports and additionally receive a Consolidated Home Report (CHR), which summarizes overall environmental performance through a single Ecoscore while preserving resource-specific information.

The primary outcome is standardized pooled household resource consumption across electricity, gas, and water. Secondary outcomes include resource-specific consumption, treatment heterogeneity by resource bundle and baseline Ecosore, and contract deactivation in liberalized energy markets. A post-intervention customer survey explores whether the CHR affects report opening, customer satisfaction, and understanding of cross-resource relationships.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Bonan, Jacopo. 2026. "Beyond Single-Resource Nudges: Experimental Evidence on Integrated Consumption Feedback." AEA RCT Registry. August 10. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19324-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The intervention consists of providing customers with a Consolidated Home Report (CHR) in addition to the standard digital Home Reports they already receive for electricity, gas, and/or water. Customers in the control group continue to receive only the standard resource-specific Home Reports, which include information on individual consumption, social comparison with similar customers, historical consumption trends, and resource-specific conservation tips. Customers assigned to treatment receive the same standard reports plus the CHR.

The CHR integrates information across all resources included in the customer's bundle into a single report. Its main feature is an Ecoscore, a summary indicator of the household's overall environmental performance, calculated from the customer's relative consumption ranking across the resources included in the report. The CHR also displays resource-specific consumption relative to similar customers, translates consumption changes into environmental (CO₂) impacts, and provides personalized conservation tips that emphasize synergies across electricity, gas, and water use.

The intervention does not modify prices, incentives, or the content of the existing resource-specific reports. Instead, it changes the way information is organized and presented by adding an integrated summary of multi-resource performance while preserving the underlying resource-level feedback.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-02-01

Intervention End Date

2026-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Pooled household resource consumption (electricity, gas, and water)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Resource consumption is standardized separately for each resource using the pre-treatment mean and standard deviation of the control group. The primary outcome pools these standardized measures across all resources in each customer's bundle, with weights so that each customer contributes equally.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Water consumption; Gas consumption; Electricity consumption; Contract deactivation (gas and electricity)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Resource-specific outcomes are standardized using the same procedure as the primary outcome and analyzed separately for each resource. Contract deactivation is a binary indicator equal to one if a gas or electricity contract is deactivated during the post-treatment period and zero otherwise.

Experimental Design

We conduct a randomized controlled trial in collaboration with a large Italian multi-utility company. The study includes approximately 190,000 residential customers who already receive digital Home Reports for at least two resources among electricity, gas, and water. Customers are randomly assigned, within pre-specified strata, to either a treatment or a control group. Control customers continue to receive the standard resource-specific Home Reports. Treatment customers receive the same standard reports plus an additional Consolidated Home Report (CHR), which summarizes environmental performance across resources using a single Ecoscore while preserving resource-specific consumption information. The intervention does not change prices or incentives; it only changes the presentation and integration of consumption feedback. Administrative outcomes are measured from January 2024 to June 2026, with the intervention beginning in February 2025. A post-treatment customer survey was administered in October 2025 to a random subsample of participants.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

Individual (customer)

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

No clusters

Sample size: planned number of observations

190,638

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

95,319

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Minimum Detectable Effect Size: 0.013 standard deviations of the pooled standardized resource-consumption outcome.this MDE comes from a simple cross-sectional calculation with 190,638 customers, equally split between treatment and control, 5% significance, and 80% power. The actual panel difference-in-differences analysis uses repeated monthly observations and customer-level clustered standard errors, so its precision may be higher depending on serial correlation and within-customer persistence.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB