Purpose -In residential buildings, personal choices influence electricity and water consumption. Prior studies indicate that information feedback can stimulate resource conservation. College dormitories provide an excellent venue for controlled study of the effects of feedback. The goal of this study is to assess how different resolutions of socio-technical feedback, combined with incentives, encourage students to conserve resources. Design/methodology/approach -An automated data monitoring system was developed that provided dormitory residents with real-time web-based feedback on energy and water use in two "high resolution" dormitories. In contrast, utility meters were manually read for 20 "low-resolution" dormitories, and data were provided to residents once per week. For both groups, resource use was monitored during a baseline period and during a two week "dorm energy competition" during which feedback, education and conservation incentives were provided. Findings -Overall, the introduction of feedback, education and incentives resulted in a 32 percent reduction in electricity use (amounting to savings of 68,300 kWh, $5,107 and 148,000 lbs of CO 2 2 ) but only a 3 percent reduction in water use. Dormitories that received high resolution feedback were more effective at conservation, reducing their electricity consumption by 55 percent compared to 31 percent for low resolution dormitories. In a post-competition survey, students reported that they would continue conservation practices developed during the competition and that they would view web-based real-time data even in the absence of competition. Practical implications -The results of this research provide evidence that real-time resource feedback systems, when combined with education and an incentive, interest, motivate and empower college students to reduce resource use in dormitories.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1467-6370.htmResearch was supported by grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency's "P3" program and by the Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges and the US Department of Energy Rebuild America Energy Efficiency Program. A team of students was responsibility for organizing and advertising the competition, reading utility meters, and collaborated on the design and interpretation of the post-competition survey.

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To explore the interactive effect of physical dimension and nutrient conditions on primary productivity, experimental planktonic-benthic ecosystems were initiated in different-sized cylindrical containers scaled in two ways. One series of experimental ecosystems was scaled for a constant depth (1.0 m) as volume was increased from 0.1 to 1.0 to 10 m 3 . The other series was scaled for a constant shape (radius/depth ϭ 0.56) across an identical range of volumes. Triplicate systems of each size and shape were housed in a temperature-controlled room illuminated with fluorescent and incandescent lights, and mixed by means of large, slow-moving impellers. All experimental ecosystems received an exchange of filtered estuarine water (10%/d). Nutrient concentrations, and ecosystem primary productivity and respiration, were traced over time during spring, summer, and fall experiments. During the nutrient-rich spring experiment, systems in the constant-shape series exhibited similar gross primary productivity (GPP) when rates were expressed per unit area or per unit light energy received. When productivity was expressed per unit volume, however, rates declined as the depth of the containers increased. We interpret this dimensional pattern of GPP in the spring experiment as a reflection of light limitation. During the summer experiment, when nutrient concentrations were low, GPP was constant per unit volume, and it increased with increasing depth when expressed per unit area. This reversed dimensional pattern is consistent with expectations under nutrient-limited conditions. Indeed, GPP increased and the scaling pattern returned to that observed in the spring experiment when we added nutrients to the containers. During the fall experiment, nutrient concentrations were intermediate between spring and summer, and the dimensional pattern of GPP exhibited characteristics of both light and nutrient limitation. Differences in productivity in the constant-depth series were less extreme and can be attributed to artifacts of enclosure, such as differences in light attenuation and differences in the ratio of wall area to the unit volume of the containers. Understanding both fundamental scaling effects and artifacts of enclosure is key to the comparative analysis of processes among ecosystems, and to extrapolating results from experimental to natural ecosystems.