Telling people about the health hazards of pollution on kids' health inspires them to use less electricity than telling them how much money they could save by cutting back on power use.

It was observed that apartments that received the health-related warnings started using an average of 8 percent less power than the control group. In fact, in houses with kids, apartment dwellers reduced their electricity use by 19 percent. Apartments that were told only about cost savings from using less energy hardly changed their habits. Researchers said, "Touting monetary savings may not have worked, in part because electricity in the United States is already fairly inexpensive."
Lead author Magali Delmas, an environmental economist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management, said, "We're finding that you have to bundle the public good with the private good. Our message about health and the environment reminds people that environmentalism is also about them and their kids."
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source-Medindia