Using goal and contrast feedback to motivate Chinese urban families to save electricity actively — A randomized controlled field trial

Residents' daily electricity consumption is one of the fastest growing areas within China's total power consumption. Thus, promoting residents' electricity saving has become an important way to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction targets in China. Although goal setting has proven effective in motivating households to save electricity, little is known about how to use feedback to motivate families to achieve challenging power-saving goals. We conducted an 18-week randomized controlled field trial in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, to explore what kind of feedback measures can encourage urban residents to save electricity when given a challenging power-saving goal. The experiment included 4 experimental groups and 1 control group. The four experimental groups were given the same 15% power-saving goal in the first 14 weeks and received contrast feedback. Different types of feedback content (self-contrast and others-contrast) and different feedback frequencies (once a week and twice a week) were used. After 14 weeks, the contrast feedback stopped, and we observed whether the power-saving behavior was sustainable only in the target situation. We collected household electricity consumption data from the power supply company's metering system, and we performed an analysis of covariance to control the influence of residents' existing electricity consumption habits. The results revealed four key findings. (1) Setting the 15% power-saving goal and providing others-contrast feedback (OCF) effectively promoted urban residents' power savings. The goal and OCF groups saved 14.45% and 11.86%, respectively. (2) Regarding the feedback content, the power-saving effect was significantly stronger in the OCF groups than in the self-contrast feedback (SCF) groups. (3) An increase in the feedback frequency from once a week to twice a week did not substantially affect residents' electricity-saving behaviors. (4) When the contrast feedback stopped, the goal itself was insufficient to encourage residents to save electricity sustainably. After the contrast feedback process stopped for four weeks, there were no significant differences between the experimental groups and the control group.