What motivates smart meter adoption? Evidence from an experimental advertising campaign in Germany

•This Perspective investigates factors associated with energy customers’ interest in smart meters.•We set up an exploratory field experiment with an electricity provider and vary the arguments emphasized towards its actual customers.•We find that customers are particularly interested when they learn that it may enable them to realize savings.•This result adds to existing results emphasizing moral (i.e., environmental) motives. Motivating individuals to engage in transformative behaviors aimed to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change seizes to be a large challenge of environmental social science. In particular, in remains unclear how to best promote the uptake of novel, digital technologies when it comes to efficient energy management. To contribute to this challenge, the present Perspective investigates factors associated with energy customers’ interest in smart meters, based on an exploratory pilot field experiment in Germany (n = 4,147 clients of a German energy firm). Specifically, we set up an online field experiment and vary the arguments emphasized towards its actual customers (medium to large customers) that speak in favor of using a smart meter in an advertising campaign initiated by the firm. We find that customers are particularly interested in the technology when they learn that it may enable them to realize savings (as compared to environmental, technological or legal reasons). This result crucially adds to contrary results emphasizing moral (i.e., environmental) motives, suggesting that it may be detrimental to shift focus away from financial motives when promoting digital technologies in the energy market, particular among medium to large consumers of energy.