Designing an integrated socio-technical behaviour change system for energy saving

Abstract

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.