The Role of Sales Agents in Information Disclosure: Evidence from a Field Experiment / Hunt Allcott, Richard Sweeney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Allcott, Hunt.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Sweeney, Richard.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20048.

NBER working paper series no. w20048

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Role of Sales Agents in Information Disclosure

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

With a large nationwide retailer, we run a natural field experiment to measure the effects of energy use information disclosure, customer rebates, and sales agent incentives on demand for energy efficient durable goods. While a combination of large rebates plus sales incentives substantially increases market share, information and sales incentives alone each have zero statistical effect and explain at most a small fraction of the low baseline market share. Sales agents strategically comply only partially with the experiment, targeting information at more interested consumers but not discussing energy efficiency with the disinterested majority. These results suggest that at current prices in this context, seller-provided information is not a major barrier to energy efficiency investments. We theoretically and empirically explore the novel policy option of combining customer subsidies with government-provided sales incentives.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2014.