Household Decisions and Behavioral Energy Economics
Paper Session
Monday, Jan. 5, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST)
- Chair: Gregory Upton Jr., Louisiana State University
Watt We Say or What We Do: What do consumers really want in retail energy?
Abstract
The paper estimates willingness to pay (WTP) for a full range of residential productattributes in deregulated retail choice markets across Ohio and Pennsylvania. Retail choice
markets allow consumers to ‘shop’ for electricity from among competing suppliers or
markets. We design and implement a comprehensive study of household electricity
consumers including in-depth interviews, their utility bill reviews, and a controlled conjoint
experiment that combines rating and choice-based approaches. We explore how
preferences for the attributes (e.g., monthly fee, price per kilowatt-hour, contract type) vary
by income, consumption, and engagement in electricity shopping quantified by a novel
composite measure of behavioral engagement constructed from multiple interview
responses. To directly examine the preference gap, we assign individual-level weights to
the attributes based on ranked preferences and compare this joint WTP to the revealed
WTP. The results show that individuals are most hesitant to monthly fees (WTP: -2.23 cents)
and willing to pay extra for renewable energy (WTP: 1.09 cents). Although the marginal
effect of choosing a renewable energy option is positive across all price levels and
respondents, the higher-income group is more inelastic for price changes. For stated
preferences, we evaluate the consistency of individuals' responses across the rating
exercise in the interview and the ranking exercise in the experiment. We find that
renewable energy preferences are the most consistent (Spearman rho: 0.41; Kendall tau:
0.32), while monthly fee preferences show the least consistency (rho: 0.04; tau: 0.03),
suggesting difficulty in explicitly evaluating cost importance despite high reactivity to it in
decisions.
A Choice Experiment to Assess Response to Smart Electric-Vehicle Charging
Abstract
Smart charging programs adjust the time of day of electric vehicle charging to reducecongestion in the grid, reduce the cost of electricity, and maximize renewable energy use.
As General Motors partners with electric utilities to design and implement these programs,
it is important to understand customers' preferences and motivations for enrollment. A
choice experiment was conducted to quantify how customers make trade-offs among
program characteristics and incentives when deciding whether to enroll in a smart charging
program. The data were used to estimate two hybrid choice models, which outperform a
benchmark conditional logit model and systematically account for unobserved preference
heterogeneity using discrete--continuous mixtures. The results indicate that monetary
incentives and environmental benefits increase the likelihood of choosing a smart charging
program. Meanwhile, there is notable preference heterogeneity regarding non-monetary
program options and enrollment perks. We further used latent environmental concerns as
a useful dimension for differentiating customers: those with higher environmental
concerns tend to exhibit higher valuations of reducing emissions and maximizing
renewable energy use. We also linked preferences to four personas designed for targeted
marketing campaigns. The findings enable smart charging providers to implement targeted
marketing efforts that highlight the environmental benefits of smart charging programs to
the customer groups who are most likely to be environmentally conscious.
Clean Energy Access and Home Production Improvement: Labor Supply and Gender Difference
Abstract
This paper examines how improvements in home production technology influence labor supply and time allocation within households. Using nationally representative data from Nepal, I estimate the causal impact of adopting liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cookstoves, a cleaner and more efficient technology, on men’s and women’s labor market outcomes. To address endogeneity in stove adoption, I exploit geographic variation in average land slope as an instrumental variable that affects the cost and accessibility of LPG distribution but is otherwise unrelated to labor supply. The results show gender differences in response to the LPG stove adoption. LPG adoption increases men’s likelihood of employment and the number of workdays per year, while women’s employment and workdays decline modestly. On average, men work about 20 additional days per year following adoption, whereas women work about 20 fewer days per year. Time-use data indicate that LPG stoves substantially reduce time spent on fuel collection and cooking for both genders. Women reallocate much of this saved time to other domestic or caregiving tasks rather than market work. These findings provide empirical evidence that men and women respond differently to improvements in home production due to gender norms, labor-demand-side inequality, and intra-household bargaining power dynamics.Discussant(s)
Justin Kirkpatrick
,
Michigan State University
Steve Puller
,
Texas A&M University
Jingyuan Wang
,
University of Michigan
Robyn Meeks
,
Duke University
JEL Classifications
- Q4 - Energy