Factors encouraging economic agents to change or smooth their energy consumption.

Summary The energy transition cannot be achieved without a better understanding of the energy consumption behaviors of individuals. The first chapter describes the characteristics, the stakes and the effectiveness of energy demand control policies. The second chapter focuses on financial incentives to reduce energy consumption. Based on laboratory experiments, our results show that financial incentives (presented as a bonus in this thesis) serve as benchmarks for subjects in their energy consumption. They encourage the least sober individuals to strive for energy sobriety but, on the contrary, partially crowd out the intrinsic motivations of the most sober.The last chapter studies the impact of the form of communication. The last chapter examines the impact of the form of communication, which can either emphasize negative externalities or stress the positive externalities created by consumption and encourage prevention. We study the impact of this framing, with a non-repeated linear public good game experiment with simultaneous decisions, also taking into account the effect of risk on decisions. Our results show that participants cooperated more in a risky universe than in a certain one, and even more with the framing that emphasizes losses. Uncertainty favorably modifies extreme behaviors, especially for women.