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Persuading consumers to reduce their consumption of electricity in the home

Smeaton, Alan F. orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-1028-8389 and Doherty, Aiden R. orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-1840-0451 (2013) Persuading consumers to reduce their consumption of electricity in the home. In: The 8th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, 3-5 Apr 2013, Sydney, Australia.

Abstract
Previous work has identified that providing real time feedback or interventions to consumers can persuade consumers to change behaviour and reduce domestic electricity consumption. However, little work has investigated what exactly those feedback mechanisms should be. Most past work is based on an in-home display unit, possibly complemented by lower tariffs and delayed use of non-essential home appliances such as washing machines. In this paper we focus on four methods for real time feedback on domestic energy use, developed to gauge the impact on energy consumption in homes. Their feasibility had been tested using an experimental setup of 24 households collecting minute-by-minute electricity consumption data readings over a period of 18 months. Initial results are mixed, and point to the difficulties of sustaining a reduction in energy consumption, i.e. persuading consumers to change their behaviour. Some of the methods we used exploit small group social dynamics whereby people want to conform to social norms within groups they identify with. It may be that a variety of feedback mechanisms and interventions are needed in order to sustain user interest.
Metadata
Item Type:Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Event Type:Conference
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:energy monitoring; domestic energy; HCI
Subjects:Computer Science > Information technology
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing
Research Initiatives and Centres > CLARITY: The Centre for Sensor Web Technologies
Published in: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Persuasive Technology. . Springer LNCS.
Publisher:Springer LNCS
Official URL:http://pt2013.csiro.au/
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:Science Foundation Ireland, HRB Marie Curie
ID Code:17698
Deposited On:12 Apr 2013 11:14 by Alan Smeaton . Last Modified 04 Oct 2018 10:20
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