Abstract
We investigate the effect of an understudied but prevalent health risk on averting behaviour: the impact of dengue risk on households’ decision to close doors and windows to keep mosquitoes out. We overcome the scarcity of such non-market behavioural data by detecting the behaviour through increased electricity consumption in tropical Singapore. Using a unique panel dataset with nationwide coverage of electricity consumption and dengue risk at the building level, we control for unobserved building-level heterogeneity, nationwide time trends, as well as region-specific time trends to identify the causal impact of dengue risk during the worst dengue epidemic in Singapore’s history. We find that increased dengue risk leads to a persistent increase in electricity consumption, and that this response varies by socio-economic status and risk intensity.
Published Version
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