Download or read book Designing Behavioral Solutions to Reduce Residential Energy Use written by Marilyn Cornelius and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy use in the U.S. residential sector accounts for a substantial portion of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions when considering residential buildings, personal transportation, and food. One opportunity to significantly lower this footprint is to focus on individual-level behavioral changes. To date, however, few climate- and energy-related behavioral interventions have been designed, implemented, rigorously evaluated, and reported in peer-reviewed literature. This dissertation begins to address that gap using an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approach that targets different population segments with studies that aim to better understand and reduce energy use in homes. Three studies constitute this dissertation: (1) identification of options for sizable residential energy savings; (2) design, implementation and evaluation of a theory-based behavioral intervention to motivate reductions in residential energy use, and (3) investigation of the concept of "global identity, " which is hypothesized to be associated with change in energy use behaviors. The first study identifies viable energy-saving alternative behaviors from experts and historical and contemporary cultures to inform the increasing number of behavioral interventions being planned and developed. This project uses exploratory ethnographic and design methods to develop foundational insights on these issues from a user-centered perspective, specifically among adults. The project identifies over one hundred options, as well as distinct principles to guide energy reductions. The second study undertakes the design, implementation, and efficacy of a social cognitive theory-based, school-based intervention for adolescents in a public high school setting. Results of the randomized controlled trial indicate significant improvements in energy- and greenhouse gas emissions-related behaviors in students who received the intervention compared to controls. The third study examines the measurement characteristics of a global identity measure previously used in other domains and its relationship to energy- and greenhouse gas emissions-related behaviors in a subsample from the intervention study, finding global identity to be directly associated with those behaviors. Collectively, this work uncovers insights about home energy use and other greenhouse gas emissions-related behaviors and potential ways to change them, and will inform the design of future behavioral interventions.

Download or read book Empowering Consumers to Reduce Residential Energy Waste written by Kathy Ann Donnelly and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis considers behavior change strategies to increase CT residential energy efficiency uptake in the context of an action research pilot. Action research includes experimental pilot deployment within a realworld system, continuously analyzing customers participating in their daily lives. The approach allows for simultaneous planning, execution, and evaluation, as well as concurrent development of major program changes, real-time solutions, and innovative responses. The Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge (N2N), in which my research was conducted, was designed to determine the minimum conditions necessary to administer cost-effective community and behavior-based energy efficiency programs. Customers in 14 small towns complete energy savings actions, such as efficient lighting, weatherization, and upgrades, like insulation, appliance upgrades, advanced air sealing, and renewable energy installations. N2N meets customers where they are already going (e.g., in the field) by partnering with local community groups, town governments, low income and senior organizations, faith communities, education facilities, and business organizations, and using social and earned media channels. I describe the N2N opportunity; program design, execution, and evaluation; primary behavioral research, especially the DOE Home Energy Score behavioral economics experiment; and the post-grant transition process. Four main pilot implementation components were used, including: lead generation using behavioral marketing, research, and outreach approaches; a technology platform closely tracking the customer; a continuous process of evaluation; and frequently published results dashboards. The research discovered gaps in program performance that will hinder meeting CT's long-term energy, efficiency, and carbon reduction goals. N2N is also finding evidence of increasing rates of upgrade uptake, where word of mouth and self-herding (e.g., where people follow past behavior) leads to action for others, as well as additional actions in individual households, respectively. The research finds two main recommendations for CT energy efficiency programs: 1) Continue to fund fast-paced, testing grounds for efficiency programs outside of current regulatory constraints to: inform program design and policy decisions, as well as direct market innovation, and 2) Use social and behavioral approaches to encourage viral spreading of efficiency uptake.

Download or read book Investigating the Human Behavior Side of Building Energy Efficiency written by Chao Chen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We describe and evaluate each of these contributions using electricity consumption data from actual smart homes as part of the CASAS smart home project. In each case we illustrate the efficacy of these algorithms to gaining insights on human behavior and its impact on energy consumption, and offer ideas for using these insights to promote sustainable behaviors.

Download or read book Consumer Behavior and Energy Conservation written by P. Ester and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mechanism Design Behavioral Science and Artificial Intelligence in International Relations written by Tshilidzi Marwala and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2024-07-23 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent advances in AI and Mechanism Design provide a vital tool for solving collective action problems, common in international relations. By using AI to optimize mechanisms for cooperation and coordination, we can better address issues such as climate change, trade, and security. Mechanism Design, Behavioral Science and Artificial Intelligence in International Relations shows readers how the intersection of Mechanism Design and Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the way we approach international relations. By using AI to optimize mechanisms, we can design better institutions, policies, and agreements that are more effective and efficient. Dr. Tshilidzi Marwala, United Nations University Rector and UN Under-Secretary General, presents the essential technologies used in Game Theory, Mechanism Design and AI and applies these to significant global issues such as interstate conflict, cybersecurity, and energy. International relations are a complex field, with many different actors and interests in play. By incorporating AI into our analysis and decision-making processes, we can better understand and predict the behavior of multiple actors and design mechanisms that take these behaviors into account, thereby producing more desirable and creative interdisciplinary approaches. The book presents real-world applications of these rapidly evolving technologies in crucial research fields such as Interstate Conflict, International Trade, Climate Change, Water management, Energy, cybersecurity, and global finance. - Provides insights for computer scientists, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers on how to develop practical tools to solve many complex problems in international relations, such as climate change, cybersecurity, and interstate conflict - Presents the necessary computer science, mathematical methods, and techniques in AI, game theory, mechanism design, and algorithm development - Includes real-world applications of AI and mechanism design in a wide variety of research topics, such as international conflict, international trade, climate change, water management, energy management, cybersecurity, and global finance

Download or read book Stop Think Build Repeat written by Victor Hanna and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Securing our country's supply of energy resources for future generations has been and continues to be a complex scientific, political, and economic issue throughout the United States. While these efforts have to a certain extent focused on securing an adequate supply of fossil fuels for our country, perhaps we need a better, more efficient perspective. Prior to dedicating our efforts to ensuring an adequate supply of energy resources -- whatever that resource may be -- we should instead strive to become a more energy efficient society and reduce our overall demand for energy. By maintaining our current lifestyles and productivity while simply using less energy, we can avoid some of the negative environmental impacts from burning fossil fuels for energy while simultaneously reducing our overall consumption of energy in the United States. The reality, however, is that human behavior poses a significant number of cognitive obstacles to acting in a more energy efficient manner, specifically with regards to adopting more energy efficient practices in the building and utilization of our cities' homes, office buildings, and other energy-consuming properties. This article will address the negative environmental impacts of our continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy and how greater energy efficiency can produce significant environmental and economic benefits to our society. The focus then will be on how a thorough understanding of human behavior can help us design better energy efficiency policies at the municipal level for overcoming the behavioral obstacles preventing us from building and utilizing more energy efficient buildings throughout the United States. By examining the energy efficiency policies currently in place in four California cities, this article attempts to analyze in practical terms how we can turn our own behavior from a barrier into a valuable tool for achieving greater energy efficiency. By understanding these behavioral obstacles, we will be in a much better position to remove them from the equation at the outset, thereby putting ourselves in a much better position both environmentally and economically.

Download or read book Exploring Occupant Behavior in Buildings written by Andreas Wagner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to comprehensively cover research methods for building occupant behavior. As this is of growing importance for building design and for building performance optimization, the book aims to provide a sound scientific basis for experimental studies in this field. It introduces the reader to fundamental questions about the topic and unfolds the different fields related to occupant actions and comfort. This is followed by more general questions about developing an appropriate research method and experimental design. A comprehensive overview of sensors for monitoring environmental and also behavioral and action-related quantities helps to set up an experiment. In this context, different experimental environments and data collection methods (in-situ, laboratories, surveys) are introduced and discussed in terms of their suitability for the respective research question. Furthermore, data management and reporting is addressed. The book concludes with fundamental challenges in conducting occupant studies, with chapters on ground truth, ethics and privacy.

Download or read book Energy Design Strategies for Retrofitting written by A. Boeri and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a coherent and realistic vision of the implications of the energy issue in the future development of our cities; places emphasis on the links between very specific and technical topics and the most challenging issues concerning energy savings and the transition to a low carbon society. A great part of the built environment in most European cities consists of buildings dating from 60s to early 90s, for residential purposes: this stock clearly presents several problems related to its functional layout, as well as its energy/thermal behaviour. Applying sustainable and energy savings principles to retrofitting interventions on the stock above is one of the most urgent challenges to be met in the very near future. Giving some examples and case studies, this book investigates retrofitting interventions in terms of energy balance: from design strategies to choice of materials and components; from market trends analysis to economical assessment, from the targeted energy performance to the energy investments needed for achieving it. The reader will benefit from the real life experiences and related results described in this book and acquire all the tools for a constructive evaluation of the different options available to him/her, when faced with retrofitting interventions, thanks to a global view of all the issues involved.

Download or read book Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policy makers and program designers in the U.S. and abroad are deeply concerned with the question of how to scale up energy efficiency to a level that is commensurate both to the scale of the energy and climate challenges we face, and to the potential for energy savings that has been touted for decades. When policy makers ask what energy efficiency can do, the answers usually revolve around the technical and economic potential of energy efficiency - they rarely hone in on the element of energy demand that matters most for changing energy usage in existing homes: the consumer. A growing literature is concerned with the behavioral underpinnings of energy consumption. We examine a narrower, related subject: How can millions of Americans be persuaded to divert valued time and resources into upgrading their homes to eliminate energy waste, avoid high utility bills, and spur the economy? With hundreds of millions of public dollars flowing into incentives, workforce training, and other initiatives to support comprehensive home energy improvements, it makes sense to review the history of these programs and begin gleaning best practices for encouraging comprehensive home energy improvements. Looking across 30 years of energy efficiency programs that targeted the residential market, many of the same issues that confronted past program administrators are relevant today: How do we cost-effectively motivate customers to take action? Who can we partner with to increase program participation? How do we get residential efficiency programs to scale? While there is no proven formula - and only limited success to date with reliably motivating large numbers of Americans to invest in comprehensive home energy improvements, especially if they are being asked to pay for a majority of the improvement costs - there is a rich and varied history of experiences that new programs can draw upon. Our primary audiences are policy makers and program designers - especially those that are relatively new to the field, such as the over 2,000 towns, cities, states, and regions who are recipients of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds for clean energy programs. This report synthesizes lessons from first generation programs, highlights emerging best practices, and suggests methods and approaches to use in designing, implementing, and evaluating these programs. We examined 14 residential energy efficiency programs, conducted an extensive literature review, interviewed industry experts, and surveyed residential contractors to draw out these lessons.

Download or read book Informed Home Energy Behavior written by Byron John Stigge and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A conceptual design of a home energy console is proposed that could contribute to home energy conservation by motivating behavior changes. A home energy console is a digital display in the home which should motivate behavior changes by visualizing energy consumption at the point of consumption, providing feedback on past performance, and suggesting improvements for future performance. The resulting console should be more tool-like than simply a presentation of data, meaning homeowners should take an active role in the control, operation and maintenance of their homes. By aiding small day to day decisions the console should gradually influence major decisions and lifestyles. This investigation was motivated by research from 1977 to 1985 that demonstrated how feedback on daily energy use, thermostat setpoints, and open windows could reduce energy consumption by up to 20%. This thesis represents, in a current context, this body of knowledge including examples of feedback techniques to encourage conservation, incentives for different types of people, and a control theory which engages the user for the purposes of learning and environmental awareness. This thesis presents a design and evaluation process of developing a prototype console. The process consisted of: reviewing prior studies on home energy feedback, developing behavioral theories for energy conservation education, performing user testing from paper sketches of a mock-up console design, and evaluating test sessions of a prototype design on a touchscreen and digital table. User testing was conducted with non-MIT test subjects in a laboratory setting with mock-up display designs. The qualitative findings were attitudes and expectations of the testers, and included: specific examples of cost feed back, methods for appealing to different types of people and suggestions for an effective structuring of the console, solutions for presenting different people feedback in their own personal way. The thesis should help future energy console designers start thinking about designing a better energy console.

Download or read book Fostering Sustainable Behavior written by Doug McKenzie-Mohr and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The highly acclaimed manual for changing everyday habits-now in an all-newthird edition! We are consuming resources and polluting our environment at a rate that is outstripping our planet's ability to support us. To create a sustainable future, we must not only change our own actions, we must educate and encourage those around us to change theirs. If one individual recycles his plastic containers, the impact is minimal. But if an entire community recycles, enormous amounts of resources are saved. How then do we go about transforming people's good intentions into action? Fostering Sustainable Behavior explains how the field of community-based social marketing has emerged as an effective tool for encouraging positive social change. This completely revised and updated third edition contains a wealth of new research, behavior change tools, and case studies. Learn how to: target unsustainable behaviors, and identify the barriers to change understand various commitment strategies communicate effective messages enhance motivation and invite participation. The strategies introduced in this ground-breaking manual are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in promoting sustainable behavior, including environmental conservation, recycling and waste reduction, water and energyefficiency and alternative transportation.

Download or read book Environmental Problems behavioral Solutions written by John D. Cone and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 1984 exploration of the relation between physical environment and human behaviour.

Download or read book Solution Sets for Net Zero Energy Buildings written by Françios Garde and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Net Zero-Energy Buildings have been the object of numerous studies in recent years as various countries have set this performance level as a long-term goal of their energy policies. This book presents a unique study of 30 NZEBs that have been constructed and have had their performance measured for at least 12 months. The study is based upon an international collaborative research initiated by the International Energy Agency - the Solar Heating and Cooling Programme (SHC). It is the first book to evaluate building strategies in houses, educational buildings and offices that have been demonstrated to work in practice. It examines how the design challenges of climate and building type have been addressed, and to what extent the various design approaches have been successful. This book presents convincing evidence that a careful re-thinking of conventional design norms can achieve a far greater performance benefit than is normally feasible. It identifies `solution sets? that work at the whole building level and at the individual building design challenge level for each climate and building type. In doing so, the book provides guidance as to how to improve the design by learning from these cases. Unusually for a book of this type it has examples of buildings in what are conventionally labeled "hot" and "cold" climates. A simple process is proposed for the reader to commission the analysis of their own climate to assess not only the conventional measure of how hot or cold or humid it is, but also to assess its suitability to support other NZEB technical challenge solutions sets such as Daylight or Natural Ventilation or comfort based climate conditioning.

Download or read book Motivating Change Sustainable Design and Behaviour in the Built Environment written by Robert Crocker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s most pressing challenges require behaviour change at many levels, from the city to the individual. This book focuses on the collective influences that can be seen to shape change. Exploring the underlying dimensions of behaviour change in terms of consumption, media, social innovation and urban systems, the essays in this book are from many disciplines, including architecture, urban design, industrial design and engineering, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, waste management and public policy. Aimed especially at designers and architects, Motivating Change explores the diversity of current approaches to change, and the multiple ways in which behaviour can be understood as an enactment of values and beliefs, standards and habitual practices in daily life, and more broadly in the urban environment.

Download or read book Models of Decision Making and Residential Energy Use written by Charlie Wilson and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research traditions across the social sciences have explored the drivers of individual behavior and proposed different models of decision making. Four diverse perspectives are reviewed here: conventional and behavioral economics, technology adoption theory and attitude-based decision making, social and environmental psychology, and sociology. The individual decision models in these traditions differ axiomatically. Some are founded on informed rationality or psychological variables, and others emphasize physical or contextual factors from individual to social scales. Each perspective suggests particular lessons for designing interventions to change behavior. Throughout the review, these lessons are applied to decisions affecting residential energy use. Examples are drawn from both intuitive and reasoning-based types of decision as well as from a range of decision contexts that include capital investments in weatherization and repetitive behaviors such as appliance use. Areas of difference and similarity between various theoretical approaches and their practical implications are highlighted. Conclusions are drawn on how to develop a more integrated approach to both behavioral research and intervention design in a residential energy context.

Download or read book Residential Energy Consumption written by Lee S. Friedman and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Behavioral Interventions to Reduce Residential Energy and Water Consumption Impact Mechanisms and Side Effects written by Verena Tiefenbeck and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: