Simply repeating information leads people to believe it is more likely to be true. Previous research has shown this for all kinds of information – often for trivial and unknown facts, but also for conspiracy theories or “fake news.”

C-SEB members Christian Unkelbach and Felix Speckmann have now shown that this repetition-conviction effect fortunately also applies to facts that are anything but trivial, namely facts about the COVID-19 pandemic. In their studies, the mere repetition of such facts increased the participants’ conviction that this important information was true.

But there was a catch: with the same number of repetitions, the effect was greater for less well-known information than for facts that were already well known. That’s actually good, isn’t it? – After all, people should be quickly convinced of new facts about the pandemic. True! But now Fake News comes into play again: Wrong information is not only wrong, but also less known – and thus particularly benefits from repetition.

Still, the good news is that you can harness the effect for relevant and factually true information, too. So: Pass on correct information and repeat it from time to time.

→ Find the original article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2021.02.001
→ Find more research projects on COVID-19 here.

So far, households – that is, all of us – have been consuming electricity regardless of how strongly the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Why shouldn’t we? – After all, we pay the same fixed electricity price at any time of day or year.

But when would we start the washing machine, charge the electric car or heat with the heat pump if a dynamic electricity price adjusted to the current supply every half hour? In other words, if electricity were cheap when there is a lot of wind and solar power available, and expensive when there is little power on offer?

That’s what C-SEB members Peter Cramton, Emmanuele Bobbio, and Simon Brandkamp, along with Stephanie Chan, David Malec, and Lucy Yu, investigated. To do this, they evaluated the electricity consumption of around 15,000 households in the UK on a half-hourly basis over the course of a year. Households do indeed respond significantly to dynamic electricity prices. Electric cars in particular are charged when electricity is cheap. When it comes to heating with electricity, there is only a slight adjustment ¬ then again, many households do not yet have smart thermostats that can take over this task.

The willingness to adjust electricity consumption to the current supply of wind and solar power will increase when more households have electric cars, battery storage, and smart thermostats. If we continue to not (have to) react to electricity prices, electricity grid operators will have to keep expensive gas-fired power plants in reserve to meet demand on days when there is little sun or wind – which will ultimately have an impact on the (currently fixed) electricity prices that most households pay. So dynamic electricity prices can lower costs for everyone.

But that’s not all: Dynamic electricity prices can increase resilience to extreme weather events. In February 2021, a multi-day cold storm in Texas had caused electricity demand to spike extremely, as many people there use electricity for heating. At the same time, electricity production declined as many power plants went offline due to the cold. Millions of people were without power for days, and hundreds died. What would have happened if there had been dynamic electricity prices in Texas? – If a sufficient share of the people had reacted to the extremely high dynamic electricity prices during the storm in a similar way to the British households studied, they would have limited their consumption to the bare minimum and thus probably been able to prevent the collapse of the power grid. That’s what a simulation by the research team shows.

With dynamic electricity prices, private households can play a greater role in the energy transition and supply security in the future. That way, everyone wins – including the climate.

→ Contact: Simon Brandkamp, simon.brandkamp@wiso.uni-koeln.de