Keeping Up With The Joneses

Do you actually look at your electric bill? My electric bill is set up on auto-pay (a big

thank you to my wife!), and I hardly ever look at my electric bill. Recently, however, while trying to decide whether to look at the electric bill or watch re-runs of This Old House, I noticed the usage metrics on the bill: How does my electricity usage for the billing period stack up next to the average household usage for a home my size, and the household usage for an energy efficient home.

I will admit that I was sucked in by the colorful graphics and by my desire to de-code the mystery behind the charts and data. The charts and graphs reminded me of an experiment that was done many years ago by Robert Cialdini. An electric company included usage comparisons on their bills. Every good experiment has a hypothesis (thank you scientific method). The hypothesis was that households with higher than average usage would decrease their electricity consumption after they became aware of how they compared to their peers.

How did everything turn out in the experiment? The hypothesis was correct: many of the more energy inefficient households decreased their electricity usage. The unanticipated result was the reaction of households who were already using less electricity than average. These households did, in fact, start to use more electricity. The thought process was probably, “Wow! I’m an energy saver! Maybe I’ll turn the heat up a couple degrees before bed for the next couple weeks. It shouldn’t make a big impact. Maybe I’ll stay in the below average usage group, or maybe I’ll be average.”

Social norms are the framework of accepted behaviors adopted by a group of people. Most people want to behave within these social norms and will aim for the sweet spot, which puts them squarely in the bucket labeled, “average.”

How did the electric company resolve the social norm conundrum? They put a smiley face or a frowny face on the electric bill showing that the customer is using more or less energy than the average household in their neighborhood. It did not show the difference between a home’s electricity use and the average, just if it was good or bad, achieving the desired effect.