The average person is only vaguely aware of whether he or she is wasting energy at home. And most people do not automatically make sacrifices for the common good.
Both behaviors can change with a few creative social nudges, aided by clever technology, which build on three lessons that social scientists say are key to changing what people do. First, make the monetary cost of choices visible. Second, enlist social norms; if people are doing worse than their neighbors, let them know about it. Third, make it easy for individuals to take a different path; try to put change on automatic pilot. Let’s apply these lessons to energy conservation.
Make costs visible. It is hard for homeowners to gauge their energy use in real time. When they turn up the heat, they don’t really know how much that energy is costing them. If the thermostat could tell them immediately, they would be more likely to change their behavior and conserve.
In one trial, the Southern California Edison utility gave consumers an Ambient Orb, a little tabletop ball that communicates wirelessly with the power grid. The sphere glows red when electricity prices are high (during peak demand periods, which shift with the weather and time of day) and green when prices are lower. After several weeks, homeowners reduced their consumption during peak periods by 40 percent.
Enlist social norms. A British company, DIY Kyoto, has designed a book-size console called the Wattson that wirelessly connects to a home’s energy meter and displays usage in watts or British pounds. Blue numbers tell residents they are using less electricity than is average for a home like theirs; red numbers mean they are being power hogs. The designers know that people dislike doing worse than their neighbors, especially when money or values are involved.
Consider a 2007 study by P. Wesley Schultz of California State University, San Marcos, of hundreds of households in that college town. All the residents were informed about how much energy they had used in previous weeks. They were also told the average consumption in their neighborhood. In the following weeks, the above-average residents significantly decreased their consumption. Unfortunately, the below-average customers allowed their usage to rise. So Schultz had a smiley face added to a below-average bill and a frown to an above-average bill. This simple nudge prompted excessive users to cut even more yet discouraged savers from drifting higher. A number of companies are now experimenting with energy bills that show consumers how they compare with their neighbors.
Make change simple. Some of the best eco-nudges make energy-saving steps easy, even automatic. One example involves the plastic keys that guests insert into hotel-room doors. In many hotels, especially in Europe, after guests enter their room they must place their key in a slot inside the room to be able to turn on the lights. When a guest is about to leave and removes the key, the lights and air-conditioning go off (the clock radio stays on). Hotels are increasingly arranging rooms this way because they know their customers have no incentive to turn off the lights, yet the hotel must pay the utility bill. The up-front cost saves money in the long term. Why don’t we have a similar switch in our homes?
Eco-nudges alone cannot save the planet, of course. But they can change people’s awareness and behavior, which can go a long way.
Note: This article was originally published with the title, "Exploiting the Shame Meter".
This article was originally published with the title Exploiting the Shame Meter.
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6 Comments
Add CommentI wonder what kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies are set in motion by this sort of manipulativeness and exploitation of people's baser drives. Ideals are necessarily targets, not results, but they can motivate people well. What does it accomplish to surround people with a milieu that treats them like objects of emotionally-manipulative control? Doesn't it encourage moral passivity and resignation, and discourage thinking for oneself, except with regard to practical superficialities?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this___We may live in a cynical and sarcastic age, but feeding into the cynicism only makes it worse.
I like these ideas. A big challenge with getting people to be more environmentally conscious is that they have no perception of their impact on their environment. The ambient orb is a great idea because it shows people the effect on their own pocket book. I also like the idea of adding a few lines to their electric bill, showing them the average usage and using a smiley face or a frowning face to illustrate below or above average usage. Competition is a great way to get people involved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey do have devices that can tell you how much energy you pull from the grid. I think it would be a great idea to have an option to set a monthly goal and the device would show you how well you're doing. In my ideal home I would have a computer that showed me my energy consumption, my energy production, the battery charge, wind speed, the amount of daylight, a rain gauge, the average external and internal temperature, and allow me to set goals that it would graphically display how everything is going. Granted... if it was my ideal home, it would also upload the results to a website that would be updated automatically every 10-15min or so.
Some twenty years ago I bought a second-hand Renault 11 that had an 'energy-stat' above the speedometer. As you drove, it changed colour from green (economy) to orange (waste) or up to red (hog). At first very frustrating for people used to getting maximum power from their engines, you gradually evolve into an economic, green and much safer driver. Why were such econo-stats not made compulsory on all cars in view of the oil crisis at the time?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstantaneous and average fuel economy information is readily available in virtually every gasoline powered vehicle produced after 1996. Some early vehicles used a relabeled manifold vacuum gauge to indicate fuel economy by showing red-yellow-green. However, some states considered the displays a driver distraction similar to the all digital speedometers that were in vogue about 10 years ago. Certain drivers spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the gauge rather than the road.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll that will do is make them feel guilty and then rebel. And they wonder why so many people go 'POSTAL'! Enough with the guilt! What are you a Jewish mother?????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople have this "instantaneous mass sensing device" called a bahroom scale in their houses right now. Using the above article's logic, obesity should be a thing of the past.
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