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Favouring behavioural change of households’ energy consumption through social media and cooperative play
Abstract and Figures
A change in how individuals consume energy is a key step in fighting climate change since it represents a crucial contribution to a more collective and sustainable lifestyle adoption.
To carry out such process, designers and scientists are seeking new ways to increase public discussion and social involvement in energy reduction issues. In relation to this, the emphasis is on raising collective awareness to enable behavioural change and to inspire people in making sustainable decisions on energy consumption. This article draws on techniques and approaches from social science, gameful design and sustainability. It defines and discusses cooperative play as a privileged path for developing energy-related mobile applications. We present here an overview of multiple perspectives, in terms of content and methodology, to contribute to elaborating design methodologies that can favour behavioural change on households’ energy consumption.
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... By the use of gamification approach, information technologies support people towards various and beneficiary behaviours. The lens of gamification has been applied to sustainability in various fields (health, resources consumption, mobility) as it fits the purpose to change people's behaviour, increase environmental awareness [Castri et al., 2014] and motivate actions by creating positive pressure [Lee, 2013: 352]. Learning by playing involves change and occurs through experience. ...
Design not only interacts with Territory, but it can also be one of the latter’s crucial transformation agents, due to the sizable and significant part it plays in the appreciation of local resources and contribution to identify and reveal the history, culture and predicates of communities where several of the products and services it projects are, in fact, generated. Regardless, Design’s role understandably pivots around the conceptual innovation and renovation of products, production procedures, communication strategies and overall services associated with general goods. Thus, its focus could actually be quite efficient when altering the perception which distinct agents from a certain value chain may nurture about the potential of very diverse territories, particularly through its ability to integrate different scopes of human activity, from agriculture to tourism, craftsmanship to science, gastronomy to the industry.
Contemporary Design and the myriad of knowledge and values it encompasses may easily facilitate the dialogue, as well as integrate and explore multiple dimensions from historically underestimated individuals and communities, both locally and within more cosmopolitan spheres. Design changes people’s lives, alters routines, shifts expectations, opens markets and, most of all, has the ability to - through the thought and projectual action that defines its practices - connect production’s several dimensions with the ones from distribution and fruition, as much in a local as in a global scale, bestowing them with a cultural purport.
Also, it is in concrete territories that transformation opportunities are created, through the development of actions and projects that are able to answer, from bottom up and in a participated manner, to the complex issues and restraints emerging from the operative social-economical models with an increasingly hegemonic propensity. Design can undoubtedly contribute to build alternatives there. On the other hand, the duo Design / Territory summons the topics from DESIGNA’s previous editions, particularly the ones concerned with Projectual Hope, un/Sustainability and Identity, although multimedia interfaces and the overall components from desire and lapse can also be easily reflected and detected in it.
... The two ways interaction is driven by the emerging E-mail address: yijararweh@just.edu.jo. techniques like demand-side management [19,32], smart metering [12], behind-the-meter energy management systems [1], and social media [10]. In addition, the extended customer engagement within the energy framework opens new frontiers for new services and products where customers are the main actors of these new services and products in residential areas [26]. ...
Energy cloud systems continue to shape the future of the energy sector. The complexity of energy cloud systems stems from their widespread and distributed aspects such as renewable energy sources, energy storage, customers engagement, social media and the advancements in communication and computing technologies. The unprecedented large-scale growth of energy cloud systems requires a crucial and dramatic paradigm shift in managing and optimizing the available energy assets in order to satisfy the increasing customers’ requirements. This paper proposes and evaluates an edge computing based framework that aims to efficiently manage and optimize energy cloud systems while increasing their reliability, safety, and security. The proposed framework exploits the current expansion in computing capabilities of the edge computing and the Fifth Communication Generation (5G) technology. The evaluation of the proposed framework shows that an edge computing infrastructure improves the service efficiency by 22.6% compared with a cloud infrastructure. In addition, the latency is reduced by 69.1%. The proposed framework provides threat detection capability by using the edge layer as an extra layer for defense against energy cloud system attacks. However, this defense mechanism incurs 10.9% overhead and 9.6% extra delay per service request on average.
... PowerPedia is an illustrative example of an application designed to better understand the energy usage metrics and to identify the energy consumption of different domestic appliances [107]. Peer-to-peer comparative approach and the social dimension is another strategy that directly correlates with existing social media initiatives [108]. In this regard, Petkov el Al. presented EnergyWiz [109], a mobile application that enables comparative feedback supported by a community where participants can compare themselves with the rest of the users. ...
Energy-efficiency related research has reached a growing interest in recent years due to the imminent scarcity of non-renewable resources in our environment and the impending impacts their usage have on our environment. Thus, facing the reduction of energy waste and management has become a pivotal issue in our society. To cope with energy inefficiency, the scientific research community has identified the promotion of people’s behaviour change as a critical field to foster environmental sustainability. However, the body of literature shows a lack of systematic methods and processes to reach a common ground when designing technology for promoting sustainable behaviour change. Therefore, this paper contributes with a thorough review and analysis of state of the art. Firstly, theoretical works related to behaviour change are collected and studied to clarify their main concepts and theories. Secondly, the different technologies, processes, methods and techniques applied in the field are reviewed to find diverse strategies in the application of the previously explained theoretical domains. Moreover, a wide range of systems developed to improve energy efficiency through human behaviour change is analysed (from augmented objects to the Internet of Things, digital applications or websites). Finally, the detected research gaps are listed to guide future research when aiming to raise the awareness of individuals through Information and Communication Technologies.
... We agree with Castri et al. (2014) that, as schools are a natural extension of a community, an intervention in a school may have ripple effects in the community. Following the lead of Frederiks et al. (2016), we used a standardised delivery method with valid measures and a clearly defined target group. ...
South African schools are finding electricity costly in terms of money that could be spent on the primary purpose of educating children, but they tend not to be proactive about these costs. Managing the monthly bills is a huge task: the usage numbers on the bill are incomprehensible, the time-of-use tariff structure is bewilderingly complex, and the person who deals with payments is usually an overburdened teacher. This paper describes a controlled behavioural experiment carried out at five schools in Stellenbosch. We provided highly visualised and intuitive daily, weekly and monthly reports to three of the schools, the other two acting as controls. The reports were shared with teachers, principals and the governing body to encourage accountability. Usage was shown as a colour-coded energy and financial component per hour and per tariff class. Using the difference-in-differences method, we found financial savings of 11% and 14% at two of the schools and 13% at the third school, where staff were also trained on the tariff structure before reporting started. These results suggest that sharing high-frequency, digestible information could help South African schools reduce their energy bills; a saving that has particular relevance given the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.
... We agree with Castri et al. (2014) that, as schools are a natural extension of a community, an intervention in a school may have ripple effects in the community. Following the lead of Frederiks et al. (2016), we used a standardised delivery method with valid measures and a clearly defined target group. ...
South African schools are finding electricity costly in terms of money that could be spent on the primary purpose of educating children, but they tend not to be proactive about these costs. Managing the monthly bills is a huge task: the usage numbers on the bill are incomprehensible, the time-of-use tariff structure is bewilderingly complex, and the person who deals with payments is usually an overburdened teacher. This paper describes a controlled behavioural experiment carried out at five schools in Stellenbosch. We provided highly visualised and intuitive daily, weekly and monthly reports to three of the schools, the other two acting as controls. The reports were shared with teachers, principals and the governing body to encourage accountability. Usage was shown as a colour-coded energy and financial component per hour and per tariff class. Using the difference-in-differences method, we found financial savings of 11% and 14% at two of the schools and 13% at the third school, where staff were also trained on the tariff structure before reporting started. These results suggest that sharing high-frequency, digestible information could help South African schools reduce their energy bills; a saving that has particular relevance given the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.
... By the use of gamification approach, information technologies support people towards various and beneficiary behaviours. The lens of gamification has been applied to sustainability in various fields (health, resources consumption, mobility) as it fits the purpose to change people's behaviour, increase environmental awareness [Castri et al., 2014] and motivate actions by creating positive pressure [Lee, 2013: 352]. Learning by playing involves change and occurs through experience. ...
Our environment evolves in relation to changes in lifestyle, consumption and production behaviors, and with the evolution in communication and interaction interfaces. Interactive technologies play an important part in this change working as personal devices, social and communication platforms, and also as networked sensors systems. Among the main emerging trends are Internet of Things (IoT) and Gamification, which constitute in fact the latest trends for interacting with reality and at the same time learning from the environment through an increasingly participatory experience. While this technical progress is fast, changes in nature are slower though sometimes irreversible. The development of the achievable scenarios for ecological and economical sustainability lacks in design approaches for the promotion at large scale of an ecological mindset. This paper positions its findings on a participatory design mind-set that acts as a key to fostering a more sustainable world. There is the need to integrate the ecological perspective as active part of the Design discussion and to bridge the communication among actors involved, people, interfaces and territory, in a more reciprocal way. This paper could provide insights and suggestions for the most effective use of reality-based interaction design in future research. By the review of case studies from different sectors, the article illustrates the current models of user’s engagement offering an overview of design features, revealed dimensions, as well as gaps for multidisciplinary design integrations. The innovative models offer several opportunities to: engage people into the design discussion, stimulate more active approaches and increase the awareness on both local and global changes.
... Finally is quantified the effect of peer pressure (pp) that a community has on the flexibility ( according to the definition of Section 3A) of a peer . Based on relevant field trials [11][12] [23][24], we assume that the peer pressure impact is quantified as a reduction of the flexibility parameter (increase in flexibility) from the a priori value to an a posteriori (after the peer pressure) value of given by: ...
The harmonization between the variable rate of energy production in the era of massive renewable energy penetration is a major challenge in an open, competitive and resilient electricity market. As a result, there is an increasing need for modern pricing schemes, which will effectively incentivize willing users to modify their energy consumption pattern to meet this objective. Current energy pricing schemes (e.g. real time pricing) treat all users the same, and do not adequately compensate for behavioral changes, thus mitigating the behavioral change dynamics. In this paper, we propose a Community Real Time Pricing (CRTP) scheme together with an Energy Community Formation Algorithm (ECFA), where users are clustered in Virtual Energy Communities (VECs) according to: i) their level of flexibility in modifying their Energy Consumption Curve (ECC), and ii) their relationships in Online Social Networks (OSNs), modelling peer-pressure capabilities. We show that CRTP with ECFA can simultaneously achieve considerable reduction in the system's energy cost and greater aggregated users' welfare than with the state-of-the-art real time pricing. CRTP-ECFA adopts a truly fair pricing policy, as each user is rewarded exactly 2 according to his/her individual contribution in reducing system costs, thus promoting the desired behavioral change.
Au Québec, le gouvernement s’est donné pour mandat d’agir sur l’efficacité énergétique et l’économie d’énergie dans les ménages. Pour concrétiser cette orientation politique, un changement de comportements des consommateurs d'énergie est nécessaire. Des études récentes démontrent que l’approche ludique constitue une avenue prometteuse, suscitant la motivation et l’engagement nécessaire pour changer les comportements énergétiques. Par le biais d’une méthode participative et collaborative, la présente étude souhaite explorer comment cette approche pourrait soutenir les familles québécoises dans l’adoption de comportements favorisant l’efficacité énergétique. Pour ce faire, un devis de recherche descriptive mixte en trois phases a été utilisé. D’abord, 33 parents ont rempli un questionnaire portant sur leurs intentions de changement et leurs perceptions quant à l’adoption de comportements énergétiques pouvant favoriser une meilleure efficacité énergétique. À partir de ces résultats, une maquette de jeu a ensuite été développée par des experts dans le domaine. Lors de la dernière phase, des entrevues en dyade (parent-enfant) ont été réalisées auprès de cinq familles de la phase 1 afin de connaitre leurs impressions sur la maquette. Les résultats obtenus démontrent que les parents ont un intérêt à développer des comportements d’efficacité énergétique pour sensibiliser leurs enfants. Les participants croient d’ailleurs que l’utilisation d’un jeu inspiré de leur quotidien serait un moyen pertinent et efficace pour favoriser la généralisation des acquis. L’ajout de défis et de récompenses semble également être des aspects ludiques gagnants pour les participants. Enfin, diverses propositions d’adaptation du jeu ont été émises par les participants.
Public institutions in developing countries, taking Tanzania as an example, are facing huge electricity consumption bills caused by inefficient utilization of electrical power. The causes of inefficient power usage can be due to the users’ behavioral and inadequacy of technology deployment in electric controlling infrastructure. This study explores the users’ behavior and the consequences of inefficient power utilization in Tanzania Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs). Around 85% of the sampled participants in the selected HLIs were least concerned with power saving strategies while using office facilities. The study reveals that inefficient energy consumption may result in high electrical power bills, unnecessary energy waste, psychological effects caused by inability to pay electrical bills and distress resulting from frequent power outages. Besides, the study proposes both behavioral- and technological-based interventions for electrical power saving in HLIs.
There is a great theoretical potential to save resources by managing our demand for energy. However, demand-side management (DSM) programs targeting behavioral patterns of energy consumption face several challenges. One of the most important ones is the challenge of sustaining the changed behavior. People may respond to intensive incentives and encouragement in the short term, but if their social and physical context does not change, they will easily revert to their old behaviors once the interventions end. It is also important to realize that different types of behaviors depend on different mechanisms: one-shot behaviors like the purchasing of an energy-efficient appliance are different from routine behaviors like turning off lights. It is in the latter that achieving lasting change presents an enormous challenge.
This chapter introduces a socio-technical approach to energy DSM. Rather than focusing merely on individuals and their motivation to change, a socio-technical approach acknowledges that individual behaviors are nested within broader societal change processes. People learn much of their behavior from other people and from their immediate physical environment. Change interventions need to be accompanied by changes in culturally shared norms and values and supported by adequate technologies, policies, regulations, and infrastructures. Successful DSM programs require a good understanding of how energy consumption is shaped by everyday life routines and cultural conventions. They also require a good understanding of the target group and their concerns. This kind of understanding helps program managers to change the context or make the change fit the context, make energy consumption visible, to time their interventions appropriately, and to involve the relevant stakeholders in their program.
Several instruments are commonly used in DSM programs. These include financial instruments, information and education, metering and feedback, energy audits and advice, and voluntary programs and commitments. A socio-technical approach suggests that there is no “one-size-fits-all” instrument, but that the best combination of instruments needs to be tailored for each target group, targeted behavior change and context. This chapter offers advice and examples on how to tailor instruments to their context, as well as highlights from an online toolkit to help program managers in this task. In conclusion, an example is offered on how to shift electricity demand from one period to another. The key message is that interventions should be tailored to the specific contexts in which they are employed, building on a good understanding of how energy use is embedded in the users’ everyday life and its social and physical surroundings.
By providing feedback to customers on home electricity and natural gas usage with a focus on peer comparisons, utilities can reduce energy consumption at a low cost. We analyze data from two large-scale, random-assignment field experiments conducted by utility companies providing electricity (the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and electricity and natural gas (Puget Sound Energy (PSE), in partnership with a private company, Positive Energy/oPower, which provides monthly or quarterly mailed peer feedback reports to customers. We find reductions in energy consumption of 1.2% (PSE) to 2.1% percent (SMUD), with the decrease sustained over time (seven months (PSE) and twelve months (SMUD).
This paper reviews electricity consumption feedback literature to explore the potential of electricity feedback to affect residential consumers’ electricity usage patterns. The review highlights a substantial amount of literature covering the debate over the effectiveness of different feedback criteria to residential customer acceptance and overall conservation and peak demand reduction. Researchers studying the effects of feedback on everyday energy use have observed substantial variation in effect size, both within and between studies. Although researchers still continue to question the types of feedback that are most effective in encouraging conservation and peak load reduction, some trends have emerged. These include that feedback be received as quickly as possible to the time of consumption; be related to a standard; be clear and meaningful and where possible both direct and indirect feedback be customised to the customer. In general, the literature finds that feedback can reduce electricity consumption in homes by 5 to 20 percent, but that significant gaps remain in our knowledge of the effectiveness and cost benefit of feedback.
A broader pool of expertise is needed to understand how human behaviour affects energy demand and the uptake of technologies, says Benjamin K. Sovacool.
This research examines the leveraging of information, digital, and social media to increase peer interaction and participation in an energy conservation campaign. We analyzed a competition between 6,500 students living in 20 residences across six university campuses in British Columbia to reduce energy consumption from a baseline level. Using a mixed methods approach, we sought to determine the overall effectiveness of the competition in reducing short and medium-term energy reduction and sought to uncover the motives for participation. We found that students tended to join the competition because multiple pathways of participation were available to them. Participants were motivated by the actions and stories of their friends and did not pay attention to the actions or competition scores of strangers. Our findings suggest that employing entertainment engagement that enables multiple pathways for participation with mechanisms for knowing the behavior of peers may be effective in shifting long-term energy consumption.
This article analyses practices and perceptions of stakeholders on including users in smart grids experiments in the Netherlands. In-depth interviews have been conducted and smart grid projects have been analysed, using a Strategic Niche Management framework. The analysis shows that there is a clear trend to pay more attention to users in new smart grid projects. However, too much focus on technology and economic incentives can become a barrier. Some institutional barriers have been identified. New innovative business models should be developed to explore different options to involve users. The many pilot and demonstration projects that are taking shape or are being planned offer an excellent opportunity for such an exploration. Learning on the social dimensions of smart grids, and the international exchange of experiences can prevent a premature lock-in in a particular pathway.
The differential effects of two forms of feedback on energy consumption behaviour were examined in two units of a metallurgical company. In one unit, employees received information about energy conservation, had to set goals and received feedback on their own conservation behaviour. The same procedure was followed with employees in a second unit, but they also received information about the performance of the first unit. In accordance with predictions from social identity theory and social comparison theory, the results clearly showed that employees in the comparative feedback condition saved more energy than employees who only received information about their own performance, even half a year after the intervention. A remarkable finding was that behavioural change took place with hardly any changes in attitudes or intentions. The discussion focuses on these findings and on their implications for organizational behaviour change in general.
This article develops a conceptual framework for advancing theories of environ- mentally significant individual behavior and reports on the attempts of the author's research group and others to develop such a theory. It discusses defini- tions of environmentally significant behavior; classifies the behaviors and their causes; assesses theories of environmentalism, focusing especially on value-belief-norm theory; evaluates the relationship between environmental concern and behavior; and summarizes evidence on the factors that determine environmentally significant behaviors and that can effectively alter them. The article concludes by presenting some major propositions supported by available research and some principles for guiding future research and informing the design of behavioral programs for environmental protection. Recent developments in theory and research give hope for building the under- standing needed to effectively alter human behaviors that contribute to environ- mental problems. This article develops a conceptual framework for the theory of environmentally significant individual behavior, reports on developments toward such a theory, and addresses five issues critical to building a theory that can inform efforts to promote proenvironmental behavior.