In 2005, Americans consumed 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy in the course of everyday activities, almost six times the world wide average per person. This in turn caused the release of 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas indicated as a major cause of adverse climate change. By taking simple actions to conserve energy, individuals can help reduce total CO2 emission significantly. Many of these changes, such as replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, are easy, cost-saving measure for individuals.
Although pro-environmental attitudes and beliefs are widespread, these rarely transform into actual energy saving behaviors. The relationship between attitudes and behaviors is complex, and barriers to behavior change include issues such as insufficient motivation and uncertainty about what choices will have the most impact. Social psychological research and studies of interventions help to define some promising features that could support energy behavior change, including personalization, goal-setting, and dynamic, comparative feedback both about individual results and others' successes. The prototype system in this proposal, StepGreen, attempts to induce changes in energy consumption through personalized information presented frequently and appropriately, through social influence processes (e.g., persuasion by peers) and by competitive interaction with other groups who are similarly trying to save energy. The Internet, with its proven abilities as a locus for mass change, provides an opportune place to experiment with these features in the large.
Specifically, this project will gather data about how to best support and encourage behavioral change regarding energy use, the results of which will inform the design of the prototype StepGreen system. A fundamental premise of this work is that suggestions will need to be personalized to each individual StepGreen member along a variety of dimensions, including what actions are recommended, the order in which they are recommended, and the manner (text and graphics) in which they are presented. To be effective such a system must achieve a massive user base. The other central activity to this project is developing partnerships with relevant civic organizations to identify appropriate populations and proven techniques for engaging those individuals.
Broader impacts: The results of this interdisciplinary project will benefit fields ranging from environmental engineering to social psychology to Human Computer Interaction by identifying misconceptions and educating individuals about relationships between behavior and energy consumption, providing a detailed understanding of how internet-scale technology can be leveraged to support widespread behavioral change. Finally, the work will benefit society by helping to address a critical social issue, energy consumption, leading to concrete reductions in U.S. energy use and by providing results that inform other domains in which societal benefits depend on individual behavior change (e.g., health, littering, community action).
