Séminaire Lionel RICHEFORT

Lionel RICHEFORT

Professeur - IAE Nantes Économie et Management

Lionel RICHEFORT nous présentera un travail en cours intitulé :
"Non-Monotic Resource Use under Local Social Norms in Networks" co-écrit avec Pauline PEDEHOUR


Résumé :
This paper investigates how local conformity and heterogeneous social comparisons shape aggregate resource consumption in networked settings. We develop a structural model in which agents choose consumption levels while observing the behaviors of reference peers, whose influence is captured through generalized mean reference points with heterogeneous curvature parameters. We show analytically that, even when individual best responses are monotone, the aggregate equilibrium response to increasing conformity can be non-monotonic, reflecting complex amplification and dampening effects across the network. To illustrate the mechanism, we calibrate the model using survey data on French household water and electricity consumption, exploiting reported influences of minimum, mean, and maximum peer consumption as reference benchmarks. The calibration reveals substantial heterogeneity in social norms and reference-point sensitivities, validating the structural conditions required for non-monotonic aggregate responses. Our findings highlight that decentralized consumption patterns can respond in counter-intuitive ways to social norms, generating divergences from the social optimum and emphasizing the importance of considering network structure and reference-point heterogeneity in the design of resource management policies.