| 摘要 | ABSTRACT
1. Research Purpose
After the unexpected power outage accident on September 2011 in South Korea, known as ��915 power outage��, the importance of the electricity demand management has been recognized to the public. As a result, there is the heightened interest about the electricity demand management research. Of course, there already existed many studies to examine the impacts of the types of electricity consumption savings methods, specially focused on the households. One of these methods is the feedback on households�� electricity consumption. However, most of previous studies on this literature have dealt with the conventional types of feedback such as written information (energy-saving tips) and written advice, enhanced billing(informative billing or graphs on bills), TV advertising and so forth. In recent years, the electricity savings effect of new types of feedback such as web-based display, In-Home-Display, and Alerts and ��traffic light�� messages through mobile devices have been examined widely.
Unfortunately, despite smart-phones became popular around the world, there is no or a few studies of feedback effects on electricity consumption savings using smart-phone application. In Korea, more than 30 millions people are now using smart-phone and it has become a part of their life. It implies that the smart-phone could be one of the cost effective tools to reduce the households�� electricity consumption. In other words, a smart-phone application invented for the purpose of saving the energy or electricity consumption might be an ideal type of energy saving feedbacks.
In order to resolve this kind of academic curiosity, we undertake a study to examine whether the energy saving smart-phone application feedback is actually working well or not. And also, we try to analyze the actual effect of the smart-phone application feedback quantitatively.
In this paper, we examine the impacts of the new types of energy savings feedback, i.e. an energy savings smart-phone application, on households��s electricity consumption. In order to do that, we use the ��energy diet�� smart-phone application developed by the Ministry of Knowledge in 2009. Treating ��energy diet�� as sort of the application- based feedback, we try to find out whether the application-based feedback is an effective policy method for reducing households�� electricity consumption and how much it could save the households�� electrical consumption.
2. Summary
In order to examine the impacts of energy savings smart-phone application on the households�� electricity consumption, we adopt the experimental research. First of all, we design the experiment by dividing three different groups. First groups are the households who are provided application-based feedback. Second groups are the households who are provided conventional type of a feedback such as ��energy savings tips�� through the email regularly, The last groups are the people who don��t provide any types of electrical consumption feedback. In terms of experimental research design, first and second groups could be called ��treatment groups�� while the last groups would be ��control groups.�� Once we classify groups for the experiment, we conduct a survey to collect each household��s characteristics such as monthly income, age, education, sex, a number of family member, the status of marriage, the size of the residence, monthly amounts of electricity consumption, and so forth. And also, we collect the information of each household��s electrical and city gas consumption on a monthly basis. In addition, we supplement some ��open questionnaire�� to investigate the energy conservation awareness and behavior changes among the groups and we directly ask to the respondent of a survey about the usefulness, practicality, convenience, efficiency of the application-based feedback.
By using cross-sectional micro data set collected from a survey, we analyze the effectiveness of an application-based feedback on households electricity conservation quantitatively and qualitatively. For the quantitative analysis, we borrow the Difference-In-Difference (DID) technique to estimate a coefficient which can capture the policy change effect between control groups and treatment groups after the policy change(Between groups comparison). Additionally, we conduct the DID estimation within the groups classifying treatment groups into two sub-groups, one is defined as the low electricity consumption group, the other is the high electricity consumption group focusing only on smart-phone application user groups(Within groups comparison). We also use the Analysis of Variance(ANOVA) to test for significant differences between means. By using collected results from ��open questionnaire��, we analyze the change of each group��s energy savings awareness and electricity consumption behavior in the aspects of the qualitative analysis.
3. Policy Implications
With the designed experiment research, we empirically try to examine the effect of the smart-phone application feedback invented for the purpose of electricity consumption savings. The empirical results are following.
First, the result from ANOVA implies that treatments groups (��application user groups�� and ��groups who sent energy savings tips through an email��) are reducing their electricity consumption while control groups are increasing the electricity consumption. Those results show marginally statistical significance.(the results are statistically significant at 90% confidence level) Secondly, DID estimation results show that smart-phone application-based feedback could be a very effective policy method to reduce household��s electricity consumption. The empirical results from ��Within groups comparison�� implies that the high electricity consumption households are likely to change energy conservation awareness and result in much more electricity consumption savings relative to the low electricity consumption ones. Thirdly, households are not willing to pay more than 10% of current electricity billing even though they already recognize the cost of generating electricity is far below its production cost. This findings imply that Korean people might still consider the electricity as public goods, but not public interest goods. Lastly, participants in the survey provide many opinions about improvements of the energy conservation smart-phone application. According to results from ��open questionnaire��, if the energy savings application is able to be effective feedback mean. it should contain the detailed energy savings information, the user convenient and friendly functions, the continued update of electricity consumption information, the real time energy consumption information, an amiable design, and so forth.
In summary, the smart-phone application energy conservation feedback is likely to reduce the households electricity consumption. Consequently, it could be a very powerful and cost effective policy instrument regarding the demand management.
The South Korea currently faces lots of problems on energy policy such the electricity supply and demand unbalance due to the failure of demand forecasting, the possibility of the change of future nuclear power policy, climate change and so forth. At least in the short-run, there are a few options to resolve those facing energy problems. One of plausible solutions might be the demand management or electricity consumption conservation policy. If that is a case, the findings from this study might provide a specific policy prescription to mitigate electricity demand-supply unbalance problem.
Today, most of people bring the smart-phone in their hands or pockets. It means that smart device is one of the most effective tools for the government to implement demand management system. Using this universal and popular IT device as a type of electricity conservation feedback, the government might decrease the residential electricity consumption so that it could alleviate the shortage problem of generating electricity facilities at least in the short-run. For amplifying application-based feedback effect on energy conservation, the government should consider the follows. First, the government should urgently undertake the field experiments or pilot programs to scrutinize the effectiveness of the application-based feedback on energy conservation. Second, The government should endeavor to invent an effective and actual public smart-phone application aiming at changing energy conservation awareness and behavior change. The last, the public information disclosure and sharing about households�� electricity consumption might be a prerequisite for deriving the successful application-based feedback effect. |
