We study how to foster engagement in the energy sector, where signals about consumption are opaque and infrequent. We evaluate an energy company's large-scale communication campaign for promoting natural gas self-reading. Self-readings allow utilities to bill customers on the basis of real - as opposed to estimated - consumption. Exploiting variation in campaign messages, we test the impact of imposing a sense of urgency on customers through a deadline for submitting a meter reading. We find that messages that induce a sense of urgency are twice as effective than generic messages in encouraging self-readings, consistent with recent research on the urgency effect. The increased sense of urgency moves to action customers with both high and low levels of baseline engagement; the effect is stronger on the former.

我们研究了如何促进能源部门的参与，在该部门，有关消费的信号不透明且很少见。我们评估了一家能源公司为促进天然气自我阅读而开展的大规模宣传活动。通过自我阅读，公用事业可以根据实际消费量（而不是估计的消费量）向客户收费。利用活动消息中的变化，我们测试了在提交抄表的截止日期之前对客户施加紧迫感的影响。我们发现，引起紧迫感的信息在鼓励自我阅读方面的效果是普通信息的两倍，这与最近对紧迫感影响的研究一致。紧迫感的增强使基线参与程度较高和较低的行动客户受益；前者的效果更强。