The grants supports the work of a team led by Karen Palmer at Resources for the Future to try advance our understanding of the “energy efficiency paradox”, the puzzling phenomenon of consumers failing to adopt energy efficient technologies even when they will save both energy and money over the long run. Palmer and her team will focus on two specific research questions related to how information affects consumer behavior. First, do home energy audits fill an important information gap in homeowner’s awareness of energy efficiency costs and savings? Second, how do city ordinances that require the disclosure and benchmarking of energy use by owners of commercial and multifamily residential buildings affect rents, occupancy, and landlord investments in efficiency improvements?The project will produce two rich new datasets about home energy audits.  One is a survey of 1,600 households across 23 states.  Over 500 of these households will have had an energy audit recently.  The survey instrument explores topics that existing panels do not, such as salience, defaults, and other behavioral economics considerations; time and other nonmonetary transaction costs; and tests of recommendation recall by homeowners.  The second dataset will be administrative information from audit providers describing the services, recommendations, and follow-ups provided to each of their customers.  Grants funds will support data collection, analysis, and the dissemination of findings to the academic community and the public.