Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Direct Marketing as a Form of Price Discrimination in Residential Electricity Choice Markets

经济学博士论文研究：直接营销作为住宅电力选择市场中价格歧视的一种形式

• 批准号: 2217111
• 负责人: Meredith Fowlie
• 金额: $ 1.19万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2217111&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Direct

Many U.S. states opened residential electricity markets to competition from for-profit companies between 1996 and 2007. Prior to this time, most households in the same town or city paid the same price for electricity. Under competition, some households pay prices triple the prices of other households in their same town or city, and households in low-income neighborhoods and vulnerable communities tend to pay particularly high prices. This research will investigate why low-income households tend to pay more than other households in a few Northeast U.S. electricity markets. Among other reasons, it will explore the role of door-to-door and other in-person marketing that is targeted at certain geographic areas or communities. The project aims to help improve policy and reduce inequality by analyzing the potential benefits and costs of additional consumer protection policies.This research will analyze distributional impacts of retail electricity restructuring. In particular, it will explore the hypothesis that heterogeneous barriers to search and costly in-person marketing create a dual market where firms price discriminate on consumers’ barriers to search. Firms may achieve this by offering low prices online for consumers who search and directly marketing higher prices to consumers who do not search. The project team will conduct a survey and randomized information intervention of 1,000 households in Maryland and Connecticut. The survey aims to answer two research questions: 1. Why do households sign up with direct marketers at high prices when lower prices exist? 2. Why do low-income households sign up for electricity products at higher prices, on average, than high-income households? The randomized information intervention will enable analysis of how search, switching, and price outcomes change with reductions in search costs and biases about the benefits of searching. The survey will also explore differences across sociodemographic groups in preferences for bundled attributes, inertia, search costs, belief biases, and perceptions of electricity marketers. It is important to differentiate between these mechanisms since they have differing implications for welfare and policy prescriptions. This research aims to build on existing literature on unexplained consumer decision error in residential electricity markets by identifying the key drivers of this decision error and exploring strategic firm response in this context. In addition, this project may contribute to the broader economic literature in two ways. First, it will assess a new explanation for price dispersion. Second, it will identify the impact of barriers to search and direct marketing on retail price differences across socioeconomic groups in a particularly clean setting that is free from common confounders, such as differences in payment risk.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

1996 年至 2007 年间，美国许多州开放住宅电力市场，接受营利性公司的竞争。在此之前，同一城镇或城市的大多数家庭支付的电价相同，在竞争下，一些家庭支付的电价是普通家庭的三倍。同一城镇或城市的其他家庭以及低收入社区和弱势社区的家庭往往支付特别高的电价。这项研究将调查为什么低收入家庭往往比美国东北部一些电力市场的其他家庭支付更多的电价。其中出于原因，它将探讨针对某些地理区域或社区的挨家挨户营销和其他面对面营销的作用。该项目旨在通过额外分析消费者保护的潜在收益和成本来帮助改善政策并减少不平等。本研究将分析零售电力重组的分配影响，特别是探讨这样的假设：异构搜索障碍和成本高昂的面对面营销创造了一个双重市场，在该市场中，企业对消费者的搜索障碍进行价格歧视。通过为搜索和直接营销更高价格的消费者提供在线低价项目团队将对马里兰州和康涅狄格州的 1,000 个家庭进行调查和随机信息干预。该调查旨在回答两个研究问题： 1. 为什么家庭会以高价与直销商签约。 2. 为什么低收入家庭平均比高收入家庭以更高的价格购买电力产品？随机信息干预将能够分析搜索、转换和价格结果如何随着电力的减少而变化。搜索成本和对好处的偏见该调查还将探讨不同社会人口群体在捆绑属性、惯性、搜索成本、信念偏见和电力营销人员认知方面的差异，区分这些机制很重要，因为它们对福利和政策处方有不同的影响。本研究旨在以现有文献为基础，确定住宅电力市场中无法解释的消费者决策错误的关键驱动因素，并探索在此背景下的战略公司反应。此外，该项目可能会以两种方式为更广泛的经济文献做出贡献。 .首先，它将评估其次，它将确定搜索和直接营销障碍在一个特别干净的环境中对不同社会经济群体的零售价格差异的影响，该环境没有常见的混杂因素，例如支付风险的差异。通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，NSF 的法定使命被认为值得支持。