Saving power to conserve your reputation? The effectiveness of private versus public information

a b s t r a c tEngage is a rapidly deployable, retrofit energy monitoring system developed for direct support of a novel energy use behavior investigation and a large-scale deployment in campus apartments. We describe the end-to-end system and report results related to web dashboard engagement during a year-long experiment. The objective was to determine user engagement with real-time and easily accessible information about personal energy consumption. Leveraging low-cost components, this system was designed to measure separately appliance plug load, heating and cooling, and lighting electrical load in dense-occupancy building environments. We developed and used an open source technology for measurement of plug load and developed signal processing algorithms to significantly improve measurement accuracy. We also developed proxy sensors to measure heating and cooling and lighting. Our results indicate that 90% of the dashboard activity was undertaken by 50% of the participants and that website engagement was more likely in mid-day and more effective in combination with email reminders. Energy conservation was achieved when combining the dashboard with public information about energy consumption.Published by Elsevier B.V.

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“…Please refer to Delmas and Lessem [24] for a full description of the experimental results of the behavioral study. Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Delmas and Lessem [24] present a thorough analysis and explanation of the results. First, we conducted an exit survey to ask about the efficacy of the dashboard and whether any energy conservation actions were undertaken.…”

Section: Energy Behavior Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-time, appliance-level electricity use feedback system: How to engage users?

Chen

Delmas

Kaiser

2014

Energy and Buildings

Self Cite

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“…They found that 80% of dashboard activity was generated by 25% of students. Moreover, a behavioral study associated with this experiment [16] compared private to public information effectiveness. Private information was given as a personalized energy dashboard associated with weekly emails, whereas students in the public information group had stickers visibly highlighted.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of eco-feedback on the behavior of campus users

Piche

Belghache

Verstaevel

et al. 2017

2017 IEEE SmartWorld, Ubiquitous Intelligence &Amp; Computing, Advanced &Amp; Trusted Computed, Scalable Computing &Amp; Commun

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Abstract-We propose a review of articles dealing with the behavior change of users due to the setting-up of an eco-feedback system on university campuses. The main building types studied are dormitories. Results show that feedback is necessary but it needs to be borne by human actions such as social influence, peer comparison, or competition to induce sustainable behaviors. A multidisciplinary solution is given to improve the impact of the eco-feedbacks on users.

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“…An influential study within this literature is by [2], which shows how providing utility customers with information on their water use relative to their neighbors leads to energy savings among 4 high consumption users. Coupling such comparative information with normative judgments and making relative performance public increase the effect of comparative information ( [47]; [29]). Laboratory evidence also supports the effectiveness of social norms: contributions to public goods, dictator and ultimatum games are influenced by information on other subjects' individual or average decisions ( [10]; [28]; [38]; [58]; [91]; [25]; [15]).…”

Section: Impact Of Traditional and Behavioral Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Push, Don't Nudge: Behavioral Spillovers and Policy Instruments

d’Adda

Capraro²,

Tavoni

2017

SSRN Journal

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We examine whether spillovers of pro-social behavior depend on how behavioral changes are induced. We conduct a large experiment using economic games, with a Dictator Game (DG) followed by either an identical game or a Prisoner's Dilemma (PD). We influence initial behavior through widely used policy instruments, either behaviorally informed (default, social norms) or with an economic/regulatory rationale (incentives, regulation). Our results provide evidence of positive spillovers to subsequent economic games (which are not treated), but only for the traditional economic/regulatory interventions and within the same game type. Specifically, inducing higher giving in the first stage leads to subsequent higher altruism in the DG, but not to more cooperation in the PD. The carry over of pro-social behavior appears to be driven by an anchoring on the initial donation. We also measure observers' beliefs and we find that these results MotivationEvaluation of policy interventions is widely recognized as a valuable tool to inform policy design ([87];[1]). Generally, rigorous evidence, on which the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of policies is based, does not extend beyond the specific scope of the intervention under study. However, the extent to which the effects of public policy interventions spill across contexts can greatly influence their evaluation.Pro-social behavior is one realm where the presence of spillovers is likely to be particularly relevant. Individuals interact strategically in many different settings and the same normative value can influence behavior in different contexts and groups. For instance, evidence from economic experiments shows that previously established cooperative precedents lead to higher cooperation in subsequent games ([60]; [30]; [17]). The presence of spillovers of pro-social behavior has large policy implications as well:for instance, a key policy question in the environmental economics literature is whether interventions that foster cooperative norms in the conservation of a specific environmental resource have positive or negative spillovers to other pro-environmental behaviors ([32, 90]).The sign and magnitude of policy spillovers may depend on the instrument used to induce behavioral changes. In recent years, innovative policy interventions based on the insights of social psychology and behavioral economics have attracted increasing interest by legislators. These policy interventions complement traditional ones based on economic incentives or regulation, and have now seen application in many fields, including to a large extent pro-social and environmental behavior ([2]; [18,86]).However, while comparisons of traditional and behavioral policy instruments exist in the literature ([53]; [36]), little is known about how treatment effects would carry forward outside the specific area they were designed for [32]. Moreover, most existing studies compare only few policy instruments within the same design, and, to our knowledge, no assessment of the relative effectiven...

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Saving power to conserve your reputation? The effectiveness of private versus public information

Cited by 172 publications

References 75 publications

Real-time, appliance-level electricity use feedback system: How to engage users?

Real-time, appliance-level electricity use feedback system: How to engage users?

Impact of eco-feedback on the behavior of campus users

Push, Don't Nudge: Behavioral Spillovers and Policy Instruments

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