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Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback

Many researchers have examined whether giving people feedback about their energy use can lead them to decrease it. However, to date no consensus has been reached about which type of eco-feedback is the most effective. We aim to test the efficacy of different feedback techniques by providing particip...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Buchanan, Kathryn, Russo, Riccardo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6808434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31644589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223727
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author Buchanan, Kathryn
Russo, Riccardo
author_facet Buchanan, Kathryn
Russo, Riccardo
author_sort Buchanan, Kathryn
collection PubMed
description Many researchers have examined whether giving people feedback about their energy use can lead them to decrease it. However, to date no consensus has been reached about which type of eco-feedback is the most effective. We aim to test the efficacy of different feedback techniques by providing participants with personalised information about the annual monetary costs of their home’s standby power usage (i.e., appliances that consume electricity despite not being actively used). Using a sample of 708 participants we tested the following feedback strategies: advice, disaggregation, loss vs gain framing, social norms, and collective information. We measured the impact of each of these feedback conditions on knowledge and intention to change behaviour, and compared them to a control condition. Using both frequentist and Bayesian analyses, we found that relative to the control condition all the feedback strategies led participants to report significant gains in knowledge. Yet, neither the additional knowledge gains, nor the feedback approach used significantly affected behavioural intentions. Consequently, the results suggest that while a wide range of feedback strategies emphasizing the financial impact of standby power consumption can effectively improve knowledge, this approach alone is insufficient in inciting intentions to change energy consumption behaviours.
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spelling pubmed-68084342019-11-02 Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback Buchanan, Kathryn Russo, Riccardo PLoS One Research Article Many researchers have examined whether giving people feedback about their energy use can lead them to decrease it. However, to date no consensus has been reached about which type of eco-feedback is the most effective. We aim to test the efficacy of different feedback techniques by providing participants with personalised information about the annual monetary costs of their home’s standby power usage (i.e., appliances that consume electricity despite not being actively used). Using a sample of 708 participants we tested the following feedback strategies: advice, disaggregation, loss vs gain framing, social norms, and collective information. We measured the impact of each of these feedback conditions on knowledge and intention to change behaviour, and compared them to a control condition. Using both frequentist and Bayesian analyses, we found that relative to the control condition all the feedback strategies led participants to report significant gains in knowledge. Yet, neither the additional knowledge gains, nor the feedback approach used significantly affected behavioural intentions. Consequently, the results suggest that while a wide range of feedback strategies emphasizing the financial impact of standby power consumption can effectively improve knowledge, this approach alone is insufficient in inciting intentions to change energy consumption behaviours. Public Library of Science 2019-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6808434/ /pubmed/31644589 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223727 Text en © 2019 Buchanan, Russo http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Buchanan, Kathryn
Russo, Riccardo
Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
title Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
title_full Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
title_fullStr Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
title_full_unstemmed Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
title_short Money doesn’t matter! Householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
title_sort money doesn’t matter! householders’ intentions to reduce standby power are unaffected by personalised pecuniary feedback
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6808434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31644589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223727
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