LONG-LASTING EFFECTS OR SHORT-TERM SPARK? ON THE PERSISTENCE OF BEHAVIOUR CHANGE INDUCED BY REAL-TIME FEEDBACK ON RESOURCE CONSUMPTION

In the promotion of sustainable consumer behaviour, it is important to establish a mental relation between one’s behaviour and its environmental impact. High hopes rest on timely feedback on personal energy consumption in order to create this link. Great efforts are being put into the development of information systems to achieve this, and smart meters are being deployed as an enabling technology worldwide. Recent smart metering trials, which provide feedback on aggregate household electricity consumption, report moderate savings of 2-5%. There is, however, a vivid controversy about consumer interest and continuous use of these technologies in the long run. This uncertainty introduces substantial risk to the deployment of these technologies, as the persistence of savings is crucial for the cost-benefit analyses and scalability of these programs. This paper investigates the long-term stability of the behaviour change induced by a real-time feedback technology. Our initial study found average energy savings of 22% for the target behaviour. In this study, we analyse 17,612 data points collected in a one-year follow-up field study. The results suggest that the effects of behaviour-specific feedback on energy consumption do not exhibit a significant decay, indicating that this kind of technology successfully induces persistent behaviour change

Short-term Spark or Sustained Impact? Investigating the Long-term Effect of Real-time Feedback

In order to adopt sustainable practices and strategies, organizations and individuals need to understand the environmental impact of their behavior and the knowledge about successful re-source conservation strategies. Information Systems research and real-time feedback systems in particular can help to bridge this environmental literacy gap”. In previous work, we presented an IS artifact that presents consumers with behavior-specific information on their energy and water consumption in real time. We found that this approach reduces energy and water consumption by 22%. In this work-in-progress paper, we address the open question of effect persistence in the long term. We analyze 17,612 data points collected in a 12-month field study from 50 households. First analyses indicate that the effect remains stable over time. In line with literature on “data push” systems, we argue that feedback systems should not require an additional step of user action to access the feedback which may be a barrier to longer effect persistence of information systems

Mechatronics to drive environmental sustainability : measuring, visualizing and transforming consumer patterns on a large scale

In order to reduce our society’s dependence on fossil fuels, the energy sector has started to undergo massive changes. Information and communications technology (ICT) increasingly plays a key role in this transformation, both on the supply and demand side. While 85% of the residential energy in the DACH region is consumed by space and water heating, the vast majority of work in the energy informatics field does not focus on these two critical end uses. And yet, the discipline could contribute greatly to reducing consumption and emissions in this area – often with a close nexus to electricity. Besides, direct, real- time feedback on hot water consumption has a particularly high savings potential and can further broaden the sphere of impact of the energy informatics discipline. This paper describes a self- powered energy and water meter that provides users with such feedback in the shower. After an earlier proof of concept study with 60 households together with the Swiss Federal Office of Energy that yielded average energy and water savings of 22%, the smart shower meter has been developed into a mass-market compatible application that has been installed in 8,000 households. This was accompanied by a study with 700 households to verify its practical viability, consumer engagement, and effectiveness in the field. The device showcases a practical example of how ICT applications can be successfully implemented at scale to transform consumption patterns in emission-intense domains, also beyond electricity

Overcoming Salience Bias: How Real-Time Feedback Fosters Resource Conservation

Inattention and imperfect information bias behavior toward the salient and immediately visible. This distortion creates costs for individuals, the organizations in which they work, and society at large. We show that an effective way to overcome this bias is by making the implications of one’s behavior salient in real time, while individuals can directly adapt. In a large-scale field experiment, we gave participants real-time feedback on the resource consumption of a daily, energy-intensive activity (showering). We find that real-time feedback reduced resource consumption for the target behavior by 22%. At the household level, this led to much larger conservation gains in absolute terms than conventional policy interventions that provide aggregate feedback on resource use. High baseline users displayed a larger conservation effect, in line with the notion that real-time feedback helps eliminate “slack” in resource use. The approach is cost effective, is technically applicable to the vast majority of households, and generated savings of 1.2 kWh per day and household, which exceeds the average energy use for lighting. The intervention also shows how digitalization in our everyday lives makes information available that can help individuals overcome salience bias and act more in line with their preferences.ISSN:0025-1909ISSN:1526-550

Overcoming Salience Bias: How Real-Time Feedback Fosters Resource Conservation

Inattention and imperfect information bias behavior toward the salient and immediately visible. This distortion creates costs for individuals, the organizations in which they work, and society at large. We show that an effective way to overcome this bias is by making the implications of one’s behavior salient in real time, while individuals can directly adapt. In a large-scale field experiment, we gave participants real-time feedback on the resource consumption of a daily, energy-intensive activity (showering). We find that real-time feedback reduced resource consumption for the target behavior by 22%. At the household level, this led to much larger conservation gains in absolute terms than conventional policy interventions that provide aggregate feedback on resource use. High baseline users displayed a larger conservation effect, in line with the notion that real-time feedback helps eliminate “slack” in resource use. The approach is cost effective, is technically applicable to the vast majority of households, and generated savings of 1.2 kWh per day and household, which exceeds the average energy use for lighting. The intervention also shows how digitalization in our everyday lives makes information available that can help individuals overcome salience bias and act more in line with their preferences