Market for electricity: Information and consumption behavior

One set of market design decisions involves what kind of information to provide to participants about other participants. Now that regulated utilities often have an interest in helping customers conserve electricity, one strategy has been to issue electricity bills that let customers compare their usage with the average of their neighbors, and with their most 'efficient' neighbors: Utilities Turn Their Customers Green, With Envy .

This seems to have a good effect. The article suggests that a big component of this effect is the competitive impulse. Of course there may also be a pure information effect; when you realize that people with similar size houses use less electricity, it may let you know that there may be ways to conserve energy that you aren't yet utilizing. (It might be hard to separate these effects in field data.)