Abstract
Household electricity consumption has increased significantly over the last two decades, leading to a series of policy interventions targeting to reduce electricity consumption in the residential sector. Information feedback regarding household electricity consumption is considered a cost-effective approach to promoting energy conservation. Various studies have so far covered the effects of information feedback on electricity consumption, yet the variations in both the types of feedback provided and the research methodologies have made it difficult to draw plausible conclusions. In China’s case, less due regard has been given to the effectiveness of various types of information feedback. This study has compared the effectiveness of information feedback between emailing electricity bills to households and installing smart meters in terms of promoting electricity conservation by employing empirical survey data from the Chinese General Social Survey with the help of the propensity score matching method. The results show that information provision via information bills curtails electricity consumption by around 20%, whereas information feedback via smart meters installation has no positive effects on household electricity conservation due to lack of access and knowledge to understand the displays of advanced meters. In light of the above results, the study suggests that policy-makers stress the importance of information feedback-based initiatives and improve the information feedback capacity of smart meters through training and education.
Highlights
Residential energy consumption (REC), the second largest energy consumer in China, is responsible for about 12.8% of total energy demand with an average annual increase of 7.24% from 2000 to 2017 (Fan et al, 2020)
The results show that information provision via information bills curtails electricity consumption by around 20%, whereas information feedback via smart meters installation has no positive effects on household electricity conservation due to lack of access and knowledge to understand the displays of advanced meters
Households that receive electricity bills have their electricity consumption decreased between 15% and 23%
Summary
Residential energy consumption (REC), the second largest energy consumer in China, is responsible for about 12.8% of total energy demand with an average annual increase of 7.24% from 2000 to 2017 (Fan et al, 2020). Aware of the significance of information feedback for residential electricity conservation, China has implemented a multitude of policies and programs to increase information feedback capacity, such as deployment of in-house display and smart meters. These initiatives are often designed without accurate resident’s requirement in mind (Du et al, 2017). The CGSS is the first national representative survey project run by academic institution in China mainland for researchers and scientists to study the behavior of Chinese households (Li et al, 2019) In this survey, the information feedback is made available by sending emails to households about their electricity bills or made the consumption shown on the dashboard by using the smart meters. The study uses the propensity score matching to focus on the effectiveness of feedback intervention by collecting the data of households from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS)
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