The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Moldova team partnered with the Behavioural Insights Team and the team of the local electricity distributor, Union Fenosa/Premier Energy, to encourage households’ conservation of electricity in Chisinau, Moldova, in order to reduce harmful emissions put into the atmosphere by carbon-intensive power plants. 

To support this, we tested a behaviorally enforced policy option: we developed and tested two behaviorally designed letters that encouraged households in Chisinau to save electricity. Both letters used a social norm comparison to highlight how much more electricity a household uses compared to an “energy-efficient neighbor.” The report provides the details on the design of these letters and the result of the intervention, which shows that households which received either behaviorally informed letter reduced their electricity usage by approximately two percent compared to households that did not receive the letter.