IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-05294058.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Words Save Watts: Government Communication and Household Electricity Use

Author

Listed:
  • Marie Bruguet

    (LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEC - Chaire Economie du Climat - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres)

Abstract

A central question for policymakers is whether communication can serve as an effective demand-side instrument. This paper studies France's 2022–23 energy crisis, when reduced nuclear availability and surging prices led the government to launch one of Europe's largest conservation campaigns. Drawing on more than 12,000 official communications, narrative-specific attention indices from Google searches, and tariff-disaggregated electricity data, the analysis traces the channel from communication to attention to demand. Crisis-framed messages captured attention and reduced consumption, while generic conservation appeals had little effect. Communication thus enhances demand flexibility under scarcity but cannot substitute for prices or operational measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Marie Bruguet, 2025. "When Words Save Watts: Government Communication and Household Electricity Use," Working Papers hal-05294058, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05294058
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05294058v2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05294058v2/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05294058. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.