Design of information for energy efficiency

People’s everyday behavior has a great impact on society’s aggregated energy consumption. Information campaigns and homepages may help with advice about, and guidance on, a more energy efficient lifestyle. One challenge is, however, to make the information both understandable and motivating for regular people.

We identify a number of psychological barriers: i) many find the terminology concerning energy hard to understand, and ii) people find it hard to aggregate information, e.g. about many small savings, into a bigger picture. Further, different consumer groups have different motives behind saving energy, and different room for action.

By first identifying different energy user profiles, we can investigate how information about energy savings can be presented in different ways to increase these groups’ motivation and understanding.

Through knowledge about behavioral design, we can demonstrate how increased motivation and understanding can be reached through information campaigns.