Do Nudges and Prepaid Electricity Token Lead to Electricity Savings? Analysis of Urban Consumption Behaviour in Indonesia

In order to determine how nudging could affect Indonesians’ energy use habits, we ran a pilot experiment. The pilot study provided compelling evidence in favor of utilizing nudging to encourage increased energy use that is more ecologically friendly. It is mainly used to offer real-time information utilizing prepayment meters (smart electricity) to display energy usage and to provide transparency about the effects of current energy use and costs to lower peak consumption. By contrasting and showing their own and their peers’ energy consumption habits, the authors minimized consumption by using social norms established by peer comparisons. Between December 2021 and April 2022, the research was conducted in urban areas of Bantul, Jogjakarta. Sixty-two respondents are divided into two groups of households: observe (self-selected) and control families (randomly selected). Both observer and control families must have had an active electricity account for at least one year and owned a dwelling ranging in size from 50 to 200 square meters. The model employed a t-paired sample using the “Non-Equivalent Groups Design” (NEGD) framework for the comparisons and the Logit model. The result found a significant difference in energy saving between the two groups for three months of the experiment. The research discovered that Prepaid Meter and Social Norm & Feedback could decrease energy bills. The results showed that every change in the Nudging Social Norm variable could increase energy saving and had a significance value at the 95% significance level.