aWattgarde
aWattgarde is an internet platform that applies social psychology and marketing concepts to motivate households to conserve energy. Over 3000 households have joined aWattgarde within the first three weeks and participated in studies about normative feedback and cost projections.
Working group
Tobias Graml, Claire-Michelle Loock, Michael Baeriswyl, Thorsten Staake
Abstract
When it comes to energy conservation in households, it is not sufficient to just rely on more energy efficient technology. We assert that is crucial to motivate households to think about their daily energy use and to conserve energy. Many energy conservation interventions (such as smart metering) assume that pure information may induce behavioral change. The results of these interventions have shown that simply providing households with information about their energy usage does not significantly contribute to energy conservation.
To achieve higher energy conservation rates in households, we developed aWattgarde. aWattgarde is an internet platform that rewards participating households for tracking their energy usage. aWattgarde applies social psychological concepts (e.g normative feedback) and marketing concepts (e.g user-specific recommendations) to stimulate energy conservation. It allows us to study the effectiveness of these concepts with a large number of households.
Description
We started aWattgarde in September 2009. It is a cooperation between the Bits to Energy lab and an Austrian utility company.
Within aWattgarde, we pursue two goals: First, we want to motivate a large sample of households to think about their energy consumption and its related behavior. Second, we intend to assess, which social psychology and marketing concepts are best suited to stimulate energy conservation.
Since April 1st 2010, the customers of the Austrian utility company have access to aWattgarde. The Austrian utility company chose to label the aWattgarde platform „Velix“. We intend to work with a sample size of 10‘000 households for the duration of one year (4000 households joined aWattgarde within the first three weeks). We will conduct several studies on energy conservation related behavior concepts such as social feedback, goals setting, and costs projections.
Previous studies were often conducted in laboratories, not based on real-world households, and with small sample sizes. Therefore, we address a large sample size of real-world households and monitor the impacts of our intervention closely.
The back-end system of aWattgarde analyses the households‘ reaction to our intervention. It also considers the households‘ average time spent on the platform, usage frequency, and total site usage. This data may provide further insight on the effectiveness of the tested concepts in motivating behavior. To investigate underlying mechanisms, surveys can be integrated into the platform.
aWattgarde enables utility companies to improve their customer relationship. Utility companies may use aWattgarde to get to know customer needs and interests by tracking site usage and conducting surveys. Besides, aWattgarde can be used to initiate and intensify customer contact. aWattgarde may also prepare households for smart metering by making them familiar with the functionalities of a typical smart metering portal. Thus, aWattgarde may help utility companies to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Links
Contact
If you are interested in aWattgarde, please contact Tobias Graml () or Claire-Michelle Loock ().