StepGreen. org: Increasing energy saving behaviors via social networks (original) (raw)
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2007
Abstract What role can social networking Websites play in supporting large-scale group action and change? We are proposing to explore their use in supporting individual reduction in personal energy consumption. In this we summarize some existing uses of social networking on the Web and propose an approach that integrates feedback about ecological footprint data into existing social networking sites and Internet portal sites.
Wattsup?: Motivating reductions in domestic energy consumption using social networks
This paper reports on the design, deployment and evaluation of “Wattsup”, an innovative application which displays live autonomously logged data from the Wattson energy monitor, allowing users to compare domestic energy consumption on Facebook. Discussions and sketches from a workshop with Facebook users were used to develop a final design implemented using the Facebook API. Wattson energy monitors and the Wattsup app were deployed and trialled in eight homes over an eighteen day period in two conditions. In the first condition participants could only access their personal energy data, whilst in the second they could access each others’ data to make comparisons. A significant reduction in energy was observed in the socially enabled condition. Comments on discussion boards and semi-structured interviews with the participants indicated that the element of competition helped motivate energy savings. The paper argues that socially-mediated banter and competition made for a more enjoyable user experience.
Using Online Communities to Reduce Energy Consumption: A Field Experiment
2012 International Joint Conference on Service Sciences, 2012
This study investigates the potential of an online intervention, namely an online community, to reduce energy consumption among consumers. The study model, underpinned by Self-Determination Theory, explores how such an intervention can enhance consumer psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness in the energy saving context. This would be highly beneficial to energy providers, such as our industry partner, for two reasons. First, satisfaction of these psychological needs drives intrinsic motivation to perform the behaviour and, subsequently, the performance of the desired behaviour and further that such behaviour is more likely to be sustained over time compared with extrinsically motivated behaviours. Second, this approach, if supported, represents a relatively low-cost communication approach compared to both traditional media at one extreme and one-to-one interventions at the other. The study involves an online field experiment across four time periods. Data is currently being collected and preliminary results will be presented at the conference.
Social Electricity: a case study on users perceptions in using green ICT social applications
International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2016
Stimulated by a large number of socio-cognitive theories, suggesting that comparative feedback motivates people to adapt their behavior according to commonly accepted behavior and values, we developed Social Electricity, an online social application motivating users to change their electrical consumption through effective and realistic comparisons with the ones of their friends, neighbors and other users with similar characteristics. By exploiting normative social influence, the users may perceive their energy behavior and take steps to reduce their electricity footprint. Collaborating with the local energy utility, Social Electricity has been deployed at a national level in Cyprus, aiming to influence citizens towards energy savings. In this paper, we present the conceptual design of the application along with analysis of results gathered through a questionnairebased survey with 198 participants, combined with mini focus group studies, focusing on the investigation of user perceptions related to several aspects of Social Electricity, six months after its official release. This study provides interesting insights about the usefulness and acceptance of such large-scale, green ICT social applications, and their potential for affecting energy knowledge and awareness, encouraging users to become more sensitive about the environment and adopt pro-environmental behaviours. He is currently a senior user experience expert and project manager at the Department of Cultural Heritage Management and New Technologies, University of Patras. His research interests are related to the design, development and evaluation of interactive systems and on supporting collaborative and distance learning. He has published more than 60 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals and conferences.
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies - C&T '11, 2011
The progress of technology has led to the increased adoption of energy monitors among household energy consumers. While the monitors available on the market deliver real-time energy usage feedback to the consumer, the format of this data is usually unengaging and mundane. Moreover, it fails to address consumers with different motivations and needs to save and compare energy. This paper presents a study that seeks to provide initial indications for motivation-specific design of energy-related feedback. We focus on comparative feedback supported by a community of energy consumers. In particular, we examine eco-visualisations, temporal self-comparison, norm comparison, one-on-one comparison and ranking, whereby the last three allow us to explore the potential of socialising energy-related feedback. These feedback types were integrated in EnergyWiz -a mobile application that enables users to compare with their past performance, neighbours, contacts from social networking sites and other EnergyWiz users. The application was evaluated in personal, semi-structured interviews, which provided first insights on how to design motivation-related comparative feedback.
Design for sustainable behavior strategies: Impact of persuasive technology on energy usage
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2019
Design for Sustainable Behavior (DfSB) is an emerging research area with the application to generate better design methods, to change consumer behavior, and to decrease environmental damage towards more sustainable action. Previous research has explored the product design for human behavior change of energy usage; however, little research has been done to link the interventions how people could change their act with DfSB theories. This research utilized smart/intelligent devices based on the theories of DfSB and persuasive technology to explore how behavioral decisions and social psychology match the preference and utility of public green low-carbon behavior by collecting interrelated data through ecofeedback. Furthermore, the participants could share and compare peer usage information and receive awards to encourage sustainable behaviors by using social network feedback about personal usage information. A questionnaire was also developed to measure the impact of sustainable behaviors on personal behavioral intention. This study contributes by filling in the gap of consumer behavior of energy consumption e an empirical data is collected. It was found only little effect of energy using behavior reduction could be achieved by providing energy using information. If the energy usage behavior reduction is significantly expected, a more aggressive sustainable development with behavioral intentions should be applied. This study also shows that the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and persuasive technologies can be integrated to achieve reliable results and to generate suggestions about product usage to engage DfSB.
Social networking sites as platforms to persuade behaviour change in domestic energy consumption
This paper describes a pilot investigation into the use of the social networking site Facebook as a platform for persuasive applications. The application domain is behaviour change in domestic energy consumption and the study focuses on determining peoples' attitudes towards the hypothetical coupling of the consumer product Wattson, which can monitor domestic electricity usage, to a Facebook application termed Watts Up. The Facebook application presents visualisations of users' own electricity consumption as well as that of their friends. Users' attitudes towards this notion were accumulated and analysed using grounded theory. Some user indications revealed negative opinions about the concept based, for instance, around privacy and confusion; however the balance of opinion appeared to favour the underlying idea that revealing other people's energy usage data would lead to competition and peer influence to reduce energy consumption. 12
2008
Abstract We argue that social marketing, a strategy that uses techniques from corporate marketing to influence the behavior of target audiences, is a useful framework for thinking about motivating people to enact environmentally sustainable behaviors. We critically examine some pervasive green applications through the lens of social marketing and discuss how we might study various persuasive factors encouraged by social marketers in these domains and in our own research.
Designing an integrated socio-technical behaviour change system for energy saving
Energy Informatics, 2019
Stimulating households to save energy with behaviour change support systems is a challenge and an opportunity to support efforts towards more sustainable energy consumption. The approaches developed so far, often either; do not consider the underlying behaviour change process in a systematic way, or do not provide a systematic linking of design elements to findings from behaviour change literature and the design of persuasive systems. This paper discusses the design and evaluation of a holistic socio-technical behaviour change system for energy saving that combines insights from behavioural theories and the persuasive system design in a systematic way. The findings from these two streams of research are combined into an integrated socio-technical model for informing the design of a behaviour change system for energy saving, which is then implemented in a concrete system design. The developed system combines smart meter data with interactive visualisations of energy consumption and energy saving impact, gamified incentive mechanisms, energy saving recommendations and attention triggers. The system design distinguishes between a version with non-personalized energy saving tips and a version with personalized recommendations that are deployed and evaluated separately. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation results of the non-personalized system in a real-world pilot. Obtained results indicate reduced energy consumption compared to a control group and a positive change in energy knowledge in the treatment group using the system, as well as positive user feedback about the suitability of the designed system to encourage energy saving.