investing in energy conservation are homeowners passing up high yields abstract energy conservation is examined as an investment option for homeowners conservation technologies produce monetary benefits through reduced fuel costs calculations suggest that many conservation measures have rates of return significantly higher than alternative investments in stocks bonds and real estate yet the level of conservation activity is inconsistent with these high yields several barriers exist which inhibit investments in conservation it is perceived as risky and the cost of obtaining reliable information is high public policies to encourage conservation should focus on reducing the risk of purchasing energy saving devices by improving the accuracy of energy savings estimates

energy conservation expectations and uncertainty this paper investigates consumers decisions about a single and lumpy conservation project accounting for uncertainty and expectations rational versus myopic rational expectations take into account that the profitability of individual conservation measures will affect fuel prices here set by cartelized supply ignorance of this interdependence between conservation and price leads to premature investments the interplay between demand and supply creates an incentive for a consumer cartel to initiate conservation strategically which advances conservation compared with rational consumers but not always ahead of individually myopic decisions

competitive pricing by a price leader we examine the problem of pricing in a market where one brand acts as a price leader we develop a procedure to estimate a leader s price rule which is optimal given a sales target objective and allows for the inclusion of demand forecasts we illustrate our estimation procedure by calibrating this optimal price rule for both the leader and the follower using data on past sales and prices from the mid size sedan segment of the u s automobile market our results suggest that a leader follower system stackelberg seems more consistent with the pricing behavior in this market than a mutually independent pricing rule nash we also find that our optimal price rule explains this market data better than other pricing schemes that do not account for optimizing behavior on the part of the leader and the follower

the experience curve option value and the energy paradox abstract this paper develops a model to explain the energy paradox the inclination of households and firms to require very high internal rates of return in order to make energy saving investments the model abstracts from many features of such investments to focus on their irreversibility the uncertainty of their future payoff streams and the investor s anticipation of future technological advance in this setting the decision to invest in energy saving technology can be delayed providing option value in addition delay allows the potential investor to cash in on future experience curve effects with the passage of time firms gain practical knowledge in producing and installing the energy saving technology enabling them to reduce the technology s up front cost per unit of energy saved we incorporate these fundamentals into a stochastic model where the investment s discounted benefits follow geometric brownian motion to demonstrate the model s capabilities we generate simulation results for photovoltaic systems that highlight the experience curve effect as a fundamental reason why households and firms delay making energy saving investments until internal rates of return exceed values of 50 and higher consistent with observations in the economics literature we also explore altruistic motivations for energy conservation and the model s implications for both additionality and the design of energy conservation policy

how different is the efficiency of public and private water companies in asia several studies have compared the efficiency of publicly and privately owned water utilities and reached conflicting conclusions on the impact of ownership on efficiency this article provides further evidence by estimating a stochastic cost frontier for a sample of asian and pacific regional water companies the results show that efficiency is not significantly different in private companies than in public ones

closed loop advertising strategies in a duopoly using the lanchester model to describe the dynamics of the market where two firms compete for customers by advertising we solve the problem of determining an optimal advertising strategy for maximum discounted profits we develop both open and closed loop strategies and explain the relationship between them using a new mathematical approach we prove that our closed loop solution is a global nash equilibrium the closed loop strategy is time variant and depends linearly on the actual market share the time variant coefficient incorporates the discount factor its computation requires the solution of a backward differential equation and a set of two nonlinear differential equations for an initial value problem the closed loop advertising expenditures are proportional to the open loop advertising expenditures and to the square of the competitor s actual market share this provides a very practical adaptive control rule that allows the manager to adjust the actual advertising expenditure and to deviate f

is there an energy efficiency gap many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous win win opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money this overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy using capital stock with two types of market failures first uninternalized externalities from energy consumption and second forces such as imperfect information that cause consumers and firms not to exploit privately profitable energy efficiency investments the model clarifies that only if the second type of market failure cannot be addressed directly through mechanisms such as information provision energy efficiency subsidies and standards may be merited this chapter therefore reviews the empirical work on the magnitude of profitable unexploited energy efficiency investments a literature which frequently does not meet modern standards for credibly estimating the net present value of energy cost savings and often leaves other benefits and costs unmeasured these problems notwithstanding recent empirical work in a variety of contexts implies that on average the magnitude of profitable unexploited investment opportunities is much smaller than engineering accounting studies suggest finally there is tremendous opportunity and need for policy relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the welfare effects of energy efficiency programs

energy conservation investment do consumers discount the future correctly we argue that the apparently high discount rates attributed to investors making energy conservation investments are not irrational or the result of some market failure rather they may result from an investor recognizing that many conservation investments entail substantial sunk costs in the presence of these costs and uncertainty over future conservation savings consumers should use a higher hurdle rate for investment than if there were no uncertainty simulations suggest that the hurdle rate should be about four times greater than the standard rate an implication of our model is that tax subsidies for the purchase of conservation capital are likely to be ineffective we discuss alternative policy approaches which are more likely to increase energy efficient investment namely mandatory efficiency standards and energy taxes

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

making enduring choices uncertainty and public policy abstract this paper provides an experimental test of the theory of investment under uncertainty and applies the theory to a group of policy decisions investment under uncertainty describes a class of problems characterized by uncertainty that resolves itself over time sunk costs that cannot be fully recovered and the ability of the decision maker to wait without loss of strategic advantage it also implies a bad news principle under which decision makers are motivated by expected costs but not expected benefits the theory is illustrated as a two period model for which the decision maker can either invest in the first period and receive a known current return plus an uncertain future return or defer until the second period when uncertainty is resolved by foregoing current period benefits a cost that is sometimes referred to as an option value is incurred parameter values are specified and an experimental test the results of which closely track the predictions of the theory is described three cases the structuring of contingent valuation questionnaires the operalization of the precautionary principle in risk analysis and the development of public policy to stimulate private investments as for energy saving products are used to illustrate potential public policy applications

dynamic programming approach to discrete time dynamic feedback stackelberg games with independent and dependent followers stackelberg games play an extremely important role in such fields as economics management politics and behavioral sciences stackelberg game can be modelled as a bilevel optimization problem there exists extensive literature about static bilevel optimization problems however the studies on dynamic bilevel optimization problems are relatively scarce in spite of the importance in explaining and predicting some phenomena rationally in this paper we consider discrete time dynamic stackelberg games with feedback information dynamic programming algorithms are presented for the solution of discrete time dynamic feedback stackelberg games with multiple players both for independent followers and for dependent followers when the followers act dependently the game in this paper is a combination of stackelberg game and nash game

a differential oligopoly game for optimal production planning and water savings abstract a production planning single decision problem is extended to a production planning and water saving dual decision problem a differential oligopoly game in which product prices are sticky and water right trading occurs is used to study this problem unlike previous studies appeared in the literature the decisions in this study are affected simultaneously by both the product and the water right prices static open loop closed loop and feedback equilibria are analyzed to show optimal production plans and water saving decisions the impact of oligopoly competition on the social welfare is finally analyzed different optimal solutions as the values of the parameters change are also simulated numerically the results show that the firms optimal production plans and water saving decisions are strongly influenced by the water efficiency initial water right allocations and water right reservation prices

optimal pricing and advertising in a durable good duopoly abstract this paper analyzes dynamic advertising and pricing policies in a durable good duopoly the proposed infinite horizon model while general enough to capture dynamic price and advertising interactions in a competitive setting also permits closed form solutions we use differential game theory to analyze two different demand specifications linear demand and isoelastic demand for symmetric and asymmetric competitors we find that the optimal price is constant and does not vary with cumulative sales while the optimal advertising is decreasing with cumulative sales comparative statics for the results are presented

making the implicit explicit a look inside the implicit discount rate implicit discount rates idrs are employed in energy models to capture household investment decisions yet the factors behind the idr and their respective implications for policy making usually remain blurred and fractional the proposed comprehensive framework distinguishes three broad categories of factors underlying the idr for household adoption of energy efficient technologies eets preferences notably over time risk loss debt and the environment predictable ir rational behavior bounded rationality rational inattention behavioral biases and external barriers to energy efficiency existing empirical findings suggest that the factors underlying the idrs that differ across household characteristics and technologies should be accounted for in energy models furthermore the framework allows for a fresh look at the interplay of idrs and policies we argue that a simple observation of high idrs or observing correlations between idrs and socio economic characteristics does not provide guidance for policy making since the underlying sources cannot be identified instead we propose that some of the factors underlying the idr notably external barriers can be changed through directed policy interventions whereas other factors notably preferences and predictable ir rational behavior are innate and can only be taken into account through reactive policy interventions

does a municipal electric s supply of communications crowd out private communications investment an empirical study abstract there are 2007 municipalities across the united states providing electricity service to their constituents of these over 600 provide some sort of communications services to the community an important policy question is whether or not public investment in communications crowds out private investment or whether such investment encourages additional entry by creating wholesale markets and economic growth we test these two hypotheses the crowding out and stimulation hypotheses using a recent dataset for the state of florida we find strong evidence favoring the stimulation hypothesis public investment in communications network increases competitive communications firm entry by a sizeable amount

demand side management overcoming market barriers or obscuring real costs abstract this paper compares two approaches to estimating the net benefits of a demand side management program that subsidizes the purchase of efficient equipment the total resource cost trc test suggests net benefits of us 6 9 million estimates based on consumer s surplus yield an estimated net loss of us 6 3 million this gap is due to differences in estimates of participants net benefits market failures do not appear to be significant and thus cannot explain much of the gap the more plausible explanation is that the trc uses a lower discount rate than participants use for themselves and it omits some costs

energy paradox and political intervention a stochastic model for the case of electrical equipments abstract this paper develops a model that explains the delay of decisions to adopt profitable energy saving investments this problem is known as the energy paradox the model rationalizes the profitability requirements raised by the irreversibility the uncertainty and the decrease of costs as a result of learning by doing in this context the wait gives investors more visibility and more lower investment costs which gives them an option value the representative agent has an interest to postpone its energy saving decision until future benefits increase and equalize its required option value formally we internalize these explanatory factors in a stochastic model where the updated energy saving benefits follows a geometric brownian motion to affirm the capacity of the model we generate simulation results for two equipments for electrical uses beyond that we extend the model to simulate the effects of energy policy instruments to promote adoption of such equipments simulations prove that the taxation of energy prices is likely to be more effective than the subsidy for energy saving equipments it is also found that the combination of these instruments amplifies the adoption of energy saving equipments and generates very favorable economic and environmental externalities

the role of income in energy consumption behaviour evidence from french households data the main purpose of this paper is to characterise quantitatively the impact of income on household energy consumption in the residential and transport sectors starting from the data collected in a paper survey we analyse the extent of the constraint experienced by households in terms of equipment purchasing behaviour and daily energy consumption this analysis shows that the least well off households are particularly constrained since the share of their budget represented by these energy services is very large 15 25 and this corresponds to a level of energy service well below that of the better off households the case of space heating shows a factor of 2 in terms of level of comfort achieved between the extreme 10 percentiles these households also face a strong capital constraint for equipment purchases this leads either to a large increase in the required rate of return or to a reduction in the proportion of households that are prepared to replace their equipment earlier the least well off households are thus doubly constrained since it is more difficult for them to invest in our opinion it is crucial to take into account this observation in the context of political measures aimed at reducing households co2 emissions

property rights versus public spirit ownership and efficiency of u s electric utilities prior to rate of return regulation for over a century american economists have been engaged in a vigorous theoretical and empirical debate over the economic performance of publicly owned versus privately owned electric utilities the authors review the historical debate and use micro data collected by the u s commissioner of labor in 1897 98 to construct efficiency measures based on a nonparametric frontier production function since this is prior to state rate of return regulation regulatory effects do not confound the analysis the authors find that publicly owned electric utilities were significantly more efficient than their privately owned counterparts copyright 1991 by mit press

stochastic competitive entries and dynamic pricing abstract how should firms price new products when they do not know the timing nor the nature of the next competitive entry to guide managers pricing decisions in such contexts we propose a dynamic pricing model with two types of randomly timed entry i e imitative and innovative the characterization of the equilibrium strategies reveals how optimal prices vary with the manager s knowledge about the timing of future competitive entries we show that price skimming is not always optimal when entry dates are unknown to managers everything else equal we demonstrate that the randomness of competitive entries make forward looking managers to choose constant prices even though the characteristics of the market would have justified skimming the demand in the normal course moreover we show that the constant pricing policy remains optimal even when the incumbent s optimal pricing strategy influences the probability of facing a competitive entry finally we find that uncertainty does not necessarily hurt firms profits

dynamic optimal pricing and possibly advertising in the face of various kinds of potential entrants abstract several nonlinear stochastic models are developed for a dynamic profit maximizing firm with respect to its price and possibly advertising decisions under threat of entry the optimal price advertising policies for these models are characterized by the use of the maximum principle while the optimal policy will depend on the assumed functional forms it is shown that under certain plausible assumptions the optimal policy is to increase profit by charging a higher price and decrease the resulting threat of entry by a higher level of advertising

optimal management of fringe entry over time abstract in this paper we investigate the problem of a dominant company facing entry of a competitive fringe smaller competitor or fringe of smaller competitors we seek to identify pricing and advertising or other promotional strategies that maximize long term profits for the dominant firm under possible reactions of the competitive fringe two main situations are considered the firms in the fringe are price takers but they advertise the firms in the fringe are not price takers and advertise the possibility of a passive reaction in the case of a very small fringe is considered as a particular case we assume that the rate of change of fringe sales is dynamically related to the current sales price and advertising efforts of both the dominant firm and the fringe the higher the dominant firm price the faster fringe entry the higher dominant firm advertising effort the slower fringe entry fringe advertising and pricing may counterbalance these effects formulating a dynamic game with the dominant firm as a leader and the fringe as a follower we present a new methodology for providing time invariant feedback stackelberg equilibrium the methodology relies on finding the relationship between the co state variables and the state variable the equilibrium solution is obtained in an implicit form by solving a set of two backward differential equations to show the applicability of our solution to real situations we use data from the u s long distance market and find optimal decision rules for at t facing the entry of mci and sprint during the 1980 1990 period the feedback equilibrium indicates that while at t s price is decreasing when fringe mci and sprint sales increase the fringe price is increasing at t s advertising is increasing with fringe sales while the fringe s advertising increases and then decreases the comparison with actual behavior indicates that at t has adhered closer to the optimal solution in both price and advertising than the fringe

do consumers discount the future correctly a market based valuation of residential fuel switching abstract dsm and energy efficiency options are generally evaluated using engineering oriented discounted cash flow procedures which value all cost and benefit streams using a single arbitrary discount rate usually the firm s weighted average cost of capital wacc the wacc based approach ignores financial risk and hence leads to unreliable results in a recent paper in this journal hassett and metcalf depart from this tradition they reflect financial risk by simulating the total variability of returns from energy saving investments their findings indicate that dsm projects are potentially risky suggesting that the net benefits must be discounted at significantly higher rates thus lowering their present values this paper presents a market based evaluation of a particular dsm option residential fuel switching using the capital asset pricing model capm under the capm approach a risk adjusted market based discount rate is estimated for each cost stream fuel maintenance and avoided outlays for electricity the market based results which reflect the systematic risk of each cost stream suggest that fuel switching is probably not cost effective because it is considerably more risky than indicated by a wacc based analysis this supports hassett and metcalf s conclusion that consumers who reject dsm projects are not necessarily acting irrationally

economics and rational conservation policy energy analysts have long been concerned with the apparently low level of energy efficient investments and have suggested the presence of various market barriers and failures that hinder investment the concept of a barrier as defined here is some force that is working against investment in energy efficient technologies market failures on the other hand are failures of the competitive paradigm that lead to economically inefficient outcomes market barriers require no particular response on the part of government while market failures may call for some policy response

price and advertising signals of product quality we present a signaling model based on ideas of phillip nelson in which both the introductory price and the level of directly uninformative advertising or other dissipative marketing expenditures are choice variables and may be used as signals for the initially unobservable quality of a newly introduced experience good repeat purchases play a crucial role in our model a second focus of the paper is on illustrating an approach to refining the set of equilibria in signalling games with multiple potential signals

the many player advertising game this study extends the time variant closed loop strategy of fruchter and kalish 1997 to the n player advertising game we demonstrate that solving an n player game using 2 players results in overadvertising

adoption of residential solar power under uncertainty implications for renewable energy incentives abstract many incentives at the state and federal level exist for household adoption of renewable energy like solar photovoltaic pv panels despite generous financial incentives the adoption rate is low we use the option value framework which takes into account the benefit of delaying investment in response to uncertainty to examine the decision by households to invest in solar pv using a simulation model we determine optimal adoption times critical values of discounted benefits and adoption rates over time for solar pv investments using data from massachusetts we find that the option value multiplier is 1 6 which implies that the discounted value of benefits from solar pv needs to exceed installation cost by 60 for investment to occur without any policies median adoption time is eight years longer under the option value decision rule compared to the net present value decision rule where households equate discounted benefits to installation cost rebates and other financial incentives decrease adoption time but their effect is attenuated if households apply the option value decision rule to solar pv investments results suggest that policies that reduce the uncertainty in returns from solar pv investments would be most effective at incentivizing adoption

oil and energy price volatility it is commonly believed that since the 1973 oil crisis oil and energy prices have been more volatile than other commodity prices this study examines monthly producer prices for thousands of products over the period january 1945 through august 2005 the results show that crude oil refined petroleum and natural gas prices are more volatile than prices for about 95 of products sold by domestic producers relative to crude commodities however crude oil prices are currently more volatile than about 65 of other products and oil price volatility first exceeded the median for crude commodities following the 1986 drop in oil prices

an empirical investigation of advertising strategies in a dynamic duopoly the equilibrium profit maximizing advertising policies of firms operating in a dynamic duopoly are derived by linking in a single framework the econometric estimation of the market response function and the technique of differential games that characterizes dynamic competitive behavior we use the lanchester model of combat to represent the system dynamics that capture the competitive shifts due to investments in advertising by the two market rivals we determine the equilibrium advertising levels using both closed and open loop policies we also compare these equilibrium advertising policies for each firm to those obtained using an optimal control theory formulation wherein the advertising spending levels of the rival are assumed to be known the empirical results obtained by analyzing the advertising rivalry between coke and pepsi for the period 1968 1981 under the above three alternative spending policies provide some interesting insights into the nature of competition between these two market rivals a significant contribution of this paper is to extend the existing literature on advertising competition by integrating theoretical and empirical analyses

are energy efficiency standards justified abstract this paper develops an analytical framework for comparing the welfare effects of energy efficiency standards and pricing policies for reducing gasoline electricity and nationwide carbon emissions the model is parameterized with us data and includes key externalities in the energy transportation sectors and possible underinvestment in energy efficiency due to misperceptions over energy savings even with large misperceptions the extra welfare gains from complementing efficient pricing policies with energy efficiency standards are zero for reducing gasoline and 5 percent for reducing electricity and when viewed as substitutes these standards forgo 60 percent or more of the potential welfare gains from corresponding pricing policies a combination of energy efficiency and emissions standards is more than three times as costly as carbon pricing when there is no misperception over energy savings and even with large misperceptions combining carbon pricing with gasoline electricity taxes is better than combining it with energy efficiency standards

evaluating energy efficiency investments accounting for risk in the discounting process a prominent feature of the literature regarding the economics of energy conservation is the debate over the existence and nature of the so called efficiency gap a frequent subject of debate is whether consumers apply a reasonable discount rate when evaluating the future benefits of energy efficiency measures a key aspect of the discounting debate is the manner in which consumer attitudes toward risk are accounted for when discounting this paper suggests that an appropriate approach to incorporating risk into the evaluation of energy efficiency projects would yield higher net benefits to such projects than standard evaluation techniques we argue that analysing the purchase of fuel saving capital as though it were a standard investment in a physical asset obscures an important feature of the decision rather than deciding whether or not to invest in an asset with an uncertain future benefit stream the consumer is actually choosing between two future cost streams each of which is uncertain this seemingly minor change in perspective has important implications for how the risk associated with fuel saving capital should be brought into the discounting process an example based on lighting technologies is used to illustrate the principles discussed

profiting from product harm crises in competitive markets product harm crises force managers to implement pricing strategies that optimally balance profitability with future potential costs of a recall we propose a stochastic differential game to investigate what should be the optimal competitive pricing strategies in such contexts in the proposed model firms strategically choose prices taking into account that any player in the market can be forced to recall large volume of products at random dates the characterization of the optimal pricing strategies yields novel managerial insights we first find that prices of risk prone products should be higher than prices of risk free products due to the addition of state dependent risk premia optimal pricing strategies differ depending on whether firms play nash or stackelberg furthermore we find that despite its leadership position the value function of the leader is lower than the value function of the follower finally we discover that long term profits of competing firms can increase with intensities of the jump processes governing product harm crises this surprising result happens because anticipating a product harm crisis softens price competition

uncertainty loss aversion and markets for energy efficiency increasing energy efficiency is critical to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion reducing oil dependence and achieving a sustainable global energy system the tendency of markets to neglect apparently cost effective energy efficiency options has been called the efficiency gap or energy paradox the market for energy efficiency in new energy using durable goods however appears to have a bias that leads to undervaluation of future energy savings relative to their expected value this paper argues that the bias is chiefly produced by the combination of substantial uncertainty about the net value of future fuel savings and the loss aversion of typical consumers this framework relies on the theory of context dependent preferences the uncertainty loss aversion bias against energy efficiency is quantifiable making it potentially correctible by policy measures the welfare economics of such policies remains unresolved data on the costs of increased fuel economy of new passenger cars taken from a national research council study illustrate how an apparently cost effective increase in energy efficiency would be uninteresting to loss averse consumers

recent developments in dynamic advertising research a variety of continuous time differential functions have been developed to investigate dynamic advertising problems in business and economics fields since major dynamic models appearing before 1995 have been reviewed by a few survey papers we provide a comprehensive review of the dynamic advertising models published after 1995 which are classified into six categories i nerlove arrow model and its extensions ii vidale wolfe model and its extensions iii lanchester model and its extensions iv the diffusion models v dynamic advertising competition models with other attributes and vi empirical studies for dynamic advertising problems for each category we first briefly summarize major relevant before 1995 models and then discuss major after 1995 models in details we find that the dynamic models reviewed in this paper have been extensively used to analyze various advertising problems in the monopoly duopoly oligopoly and supply chain systems our review reveals that the diffusion models have not been used to analyze advertising problems in supply chain operations which may be a research direction in the future moreover we learn from our review that very few publications regarding dynamic advertising problems have considered the supply chain competition we also find that very few researchers have used the diffusion model to investigate the dynamic advertising problems with product quality as a decision variable and the pricing decision has not been incorporated into any extant lanchester model the paper ends with a summary of our review and suggestions on possible research directions in the future

empirical analysis of closed loop duopoly advertising strategies closed loop perfect equilibria in a lanchester duopoly differential game of advertising competition are used as the basis for empirical investigation two systems of simultaneous nonlinear equations are formed one from a general lanchester model and one from a constrained model two empirical applications are conducted in one involving coca cola and pepsi cola a formal statistical testing procedure is used to detect whether closed loop equilibrium advertising strategies are used by the competitors rather than open loop strategies in the second application involving anheuser busch and miller the general model is estimated results indicate that closed loop equilibria better explain dynamic advertising competition than do open loop equilibria also closed loop equilibrium advertising strategies implied by model estimates show that competitive advertising levels may or may not be monotonic in market share

subjective discount rates in the general population and their predictive power for energy saving behavior why do people sometimes refrain from saving energy even if it would pay off in monetary terms subjective discount rates present one possible explanation for this lack of foresight but little is known about their level and reliability in the general population with regard to behavior persons with lower discount rates are expected to accept additional costs upfront more readily than those with higher discount rates based on a representative nation wide study the swiss environmental survey 2007 and a follow up survey our analyses reveal that on average subjective discount rates are well above market interest rates and moderately stable over a time interval of four years income and education are negatively correlated with discount rates contrary to expectations we did not find convincing support for an impact of discount rates on energy saving behavior