Are consumers willing to switch to smart time of use electricity tariffs? The importance of loss-aversion and electric vehicle ownership

Smart time of use tariffs are a key part of most government’s strategies to ensure our future electricity supply is clean, affordable and secure – but will consumers be willing to switch to them? This paper presents the results of a survey experiment conducted on a nationally representative sample of 2020 British energy bill payers. The data suggests that over a third of bill payers are in favour of switching to a 3-tiered smart time of use tariff, indicating a sizeable potential market for these tariffs. There is substantial variation in willingness to switch, driven by differences in loss-aversion and ownership of demand flexible appliances rather than standard socio-economic/demographic factors. This is the first time loss-aversion has been measured amongst energy bill payers and the results suggest loss-aversion oss aversion ehavioural economics