PrepTest 151, Section 4, Question 16
Tenants who do not have to pay their(40 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- ATenants who do(15 more words not shown)
- BMany initiatives have(15 more words not shown)
- CLandlords who pay(22 more words not shown)
- DSome tenant dwellings(16 more words not shown)
- ESome people conserve(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Would the bill be big enough to change anyone's behavior?
Charging tenants for what they use could encourage them to turn off lights or run appliances less often. I can see the appeal of that reasoning. But imagine that careful use costs a tenant $1 and wasteful use costs $5. That difference might not motivate much effort. A change from $50 to $500 would be a different story.
What we’re looking for
Those numbers are hypothetical, but they expose the question: does giving someone a financial incentive actually produce the predicted conservation? For a weakener, my first thought is that the savings might be too small for tenants to care. Let's see what the answers tell us about the effect of changing who pays.
Working the answers
- A
Higher rent can cover the landlord's electricity costs without giving an individual tenant a way to save money by using less electricity. If rent stays the same whether the tenant turns off the lights or leaves them on, the immediate incentive still differs from paying a bill based on personal use. A tells us who ultimately bears a cost, not that the proposed change would fail to conserve energy.
- B
Education about energy savings doesn't tell us whether separately billing tenants changes their behavior. The campaigns could exist under either billing arrangement. We also aren't told how effective they are. B doesn't explain why the change in incentives would fail to produce the predicted result.
- CCorrect
This shifts attention from the tenants to the landlords. When landlords pay for electricity, they have a reason to supply efficient appliances. Moving the bill to tenants reduces that particular incentive for the person choosing those appliances.
That creates a possible offset: tenants might use appliances more carefully while landlords have less reason to invest in efficient ones. C doesn't say every landlord would immediately install wasteful equipment. It identifies a source of conservation under the existing arrangement that the argument overlooks. The net change in energy use is therefore less certain than the tenant-only story suggests.
- D
Expensive rewiring could stop some landlords from installing meters. But the conclusion predicts what happens if more landlords do install them. Showing that the change may be difficult doesn't show that it would fail to conserve energy once made. D questions feasibility rather than the predicted effect of the stated change.
- E
Some people may conserve for environmental or other reasons and still respond to a financial incentive. Others might begin conserving only when they pay for their use. The existence of some nonfinancial motivation doesn't establish that individual billing would add no conservation. C gives a specific competing effect of the billing change; E does not.
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