Improving College Students' Initiative of Energy Conservation: The Role of Peers

Abstract

In the context of carbon neutrality, guiding consumers’ lifestyles toward the direction of low energy consumption and low pollution is one of the biggest challenges for policymakers. Peer effects can produce social multipliers, which is of great significance to policy formulation and intervention, and may become a useful tool to help speed up problem-solving. However, previous studies have not treated peer effect in the energy-saving behavior of university students in much detail. This paper, therefore, attempts to obtain further in-depth information by utilizing a quasi-natural experiment of college students and the classical linear-in-means model. The results show that the energy-saving behavior of college students is significantly affected by peers. When companions’ initiative of energy-saving behavior increases by one standard deviation, the individual’s initiative increases by 0.132 standard deviations. We also explore the heterogeneity of peer influence from different perspectives and the possible mechanisms. The conclusion is robust after controlling the impact of correlated and exogenous effects, exploiting the instrumental variable method, changing the minimum group size, and other robustness tests. The findings provide new insights into understanding the relationship between peer effect and energy-saving behavior, which helps in designing policies aimed at promoting carbon neutrality on the consumption side.

Keywords: peer effect, energy-saving behavior, survey, college students