Impacts of Better Information on Driving Habits and Willingness to Pay

In 2017, the transportation sector was the second largest consumer of energy in the U.S., representing approximately 29 percent of total energy consumption. Energy consumption in the transportation sector closely tracks greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: transportation contributed about 28 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions in 2016, and cars, motorcycles, and trucks contributed 83 percent of those emissions. Despite significant fuel economy increases for passenger cars and light trucks, overall fuel consumption for the sector has increased over the past several decades because of an increase in the number of vehicles and the number of miles traveled per vehicle.
Since the transportation sector is such a large contributor to U.S. GHG emissions, reducing transportation-related emissions is a necessary step to achieve our emissions reduction goals. Policies have primarily sought to address this by promoting increases in fuel economy (e.g., fuel economy standards) and the use of alternative fuels (e.g., renewable fuel standards).

We implement a field experiment to test for the persistence and magnitude of information-based interventions on driver behavior and its impact on the fuel economy. In addition, we elicit drivers willingness to pay for this technology at varying levels of information and driver feedback.