Wemyss, Devon and Grieder, Manuel and Cellina, Francesca (2021) Moving beyond the hype: promises and pitfalls of persuasive behaviour change apps to support social innovation in energy and low-carbon transitions. In: Advancing the understanding of social innovation in sustainability transitions: Potentials, processes, and policies for accelerating transitions, November, 15 - 17 2021, Online (Zoom). (Submitted)
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Social innovation and digital tools have emerged as synergistic forces for the transition to a low-carbon society. Specifically, smartphone apps can use novel data to creatively engage people to act more sustainably, and thus capture the power of collective individual action. However, digital tools do not guarantee successful social innovation. Critical reflection is required to implement innovations in ways that are effective, theory- and experience-driven, appropriate for the context and target group, and facilitate scaling. In this paper, we highlight cases of a CO2-tracker app and an energy saving app and assess their impact on climate relevant behaviour against the resource-intensive development and long-term viability for wide-scale uptake. Only with such an assessment can the benefits of digital innovations move beyond developer learnings and reach real-world climate impacts. While we find that the required scale-up, in terms of the number of users needed to ensure that the positive environmental impacts outweigh app development and running costs, seems challenging but feasible, our analyses point to important financial, technical, organisational, and political hurdles that can limit the impact of such projects at various phases. We propose a set of questions to assess the potential benefits and impact of any prospected new persuasive apps to support the low-carbon transition.
| Item Type: | Article in conference proceedings or Presentation at a conference (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Computer sciences Social studies |
| Department/unit: | Dipartimento ambiente costruzioni e design > Istituto sostenibilità applicata all'ambiente costruito |
| Depositing User: | Francesca Cellina |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Nov 2022 09:15 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Nov 2022 09:27 |
| URI: | http://repository.supsi.ch/id/eprint/13615 |
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