Social learning in household communities: Can energy-sufficient routines be fostered by means of app-based peer-to-peer interaction?

Cellina, Francesca and Lobsiger-Kägi, Evelyn and Wemyss, Devon and Profeta, Giovanni and Granato, Pasquale (2022) Social learning in household communities: Can energy-sufficient routines be fostered by means of app-based peer-to-peer interaction? In: ​​International Workshop on Household Innovation and Agency in Sustainability Transitions, October, 24-26 2022, Prato - Monash University Europe. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Changing individual energy consumption has been identified as one of the top five challenges for humanity to tackle the overarching “grand challenge of sustainability”, and households can play a key role towards both energy efficiency and sufficiency. Taking advantage of information and communication technologies (ICT), and of the growing availability of smart metering infrastructures, many energy-saving smartphone apps targeting households have been recently developed to support individual agency for the energy transition. In the Social Power Plus (SPP) project we aim at engaging a virtual community of households, by means of an app that provides energy consumption feedback at the household level, launches challenges aimed at re-crafting eight specific energy related household routines, and supports peer-to-peer interactions and exchange of experiences through an internal forum (“pinboard”). In this paper we analyse empirical data collected in Spring 2022 during a three-month field test of the SPP app involving about 200 voluntary households in three Swiss regions. In particular, we aim at i) understanding if the app’s social interaction features activated a social learning process favouring energy-sufficient routines within the community of app users, ii) identifying app features most effective in engaging users, and iii) verifying if and to what extent household’s routines changed after use of the SPP app. Our analysis, based on two surveys run before and after the intervention, in-app analytics, and exploration of the pinboard contents, shows that active as well as passive social interactions mediated by the SPP pinboard activated a social learning process only within a small subsample of participants. However, the majority of households valued the individual energy consumption feedback and goal setting features, and daily energy routines changed after use of the SPP app. Future research might benefit by profiling the characteristics of the sub-sample of households that engaged with the app’s social features and by estimating the app’s energy saving impact on them. If relevant, those specific household groups might become the target for future app-based campaigns.

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