Benefits of household energy saving as a game

In France, a num­ber of pub­lic policies aimed at encour­aging house­hold energy man­age­ment are emer­ging. How­ever, these are still not enough to sup­port house­holds in their daily efforts to save energy. With this in mind, the i3-CRG team at Ecole Poly­tech­nique (IP Par­is) is try­ing to high­light the value of gami­fic­a­tion tools. 

Gami­fic­a­tion refers to the integ­ra­tion of game ele­ments or game mech­an­isms. Adapt­ing this concept to beha­viour change sup­port sys­tems could help to devel­op “full house­hold aware­ness”. In oth­er words, it would illus­trate the extent of the efforts made, and how long they last, to incor­por­ate energy effi­ciency into their daily routines.

With little in the way of tan­gible evid­ence, energy con­sump­tion at home can escape daily atten­tion, even for those determ­ined to con­trol their con­sump­tion more effect­ively. In fact, it’s easi­er to see pro­gress on a day-to-day basis when you’re com­mit­ted to redu­cing waste than when you’re try­ing to reduce energy con­sump­tion. Chan­ging habits takes time and long-term attention.

In a soci­ety of over-con­sump­tion and con­stant time pres­sure, new res­ol­u­tions can eas­ily be aban­doned or pushed to one side. This form of mind­ful­ness is par­tic­u­larly import­ant in a domest­ic con­text, where house­holds are faced with mul­tiple and some­times con­tra­dict­ory daily con­cerns. Gami­fic­a­tion is one way of trig­ger­ing new beha­viours that can even­tu­ally become new habits, but can it main­tain them?

These ini­tial res­ults raise ques­tions about the effect­ive­ness of gami­fic­a­tion in ini­ti­at­ing a change in behaviour.

The i3-CRG’s research is look­ing at the “Déclics chal­lenges”, a French ini­ti­at­ive that aims to engage house­holds in energy-sav­ing meas­ures through gami­fic­a­tion. The data looks at six types of energy-sav­ing prac­tices, such as redu­cing needs or habits – par­tic­u­larly in terms of heat­ing – or repla­cing energy-guzz­ling devices. This data is com­pared to the dif­fer­ent levels of aware­ness required to adopt these prac­tices. Inter­views with house­holds that have taken part in the Déclics chal­lenges are used to meas­ure the atten­tion­al intens­ity of their prac­tices, before, dur­ing and after the chal­lenges. In par­tic­u­lar, by describ­ing the prac­tices adop­ted by par­ti­cipants and the time and effort involved, the research­ers can use ver­batim cod­ing to meas­ure the impact of gami­fic­a­tion on atten­tion levels.

The res­ults show that chal­lenges have dif­fer­ent effects on dif­fer­ent house­hold pro­files. Four pro­files were identified:

• Revealed poten­tial: house­holds that were ori­gin­ally not very attent­ive to energy-sav­ing eco-ges­tures, but which man­aged – fol­low­ing the chal­lenges – to change some of their routines per­man­ently. These house­hold pro­files were par­tic­u­larly recept­ive to gami­fic­a­tion. How­ever, once the chal­lenge was over, they did not try to go bey­ond the prac­tices put in place dur­ing the challenge.
• Missed oppor­tun­it­ies: house­holds that are also not very attent­ive to energy eco-ges­tures, but for whom the chal­lenges seem to have had little impact. Often signed up by a “driv­ing” fam­ily mem­ber, these house­holds found it dif­fi­cult to make the chal­lenge their own, either because the formats pro­posed were unsuited to their life con­straints (times, place, format, etc.), or because the oth­er mem­bers of the house­hold were pass­ive or even res­ist­ant to the intro­duc­tion of new routines.
• Com­pet­it­ive house­holds: house­holds that are already attent­ive to suf­fi­ciency in their daily lives, and which have been par­tic­u­larly stim­u­lated by the idea of com­pet­i­tion, feed­back, and feed­back on their own per­form­ance. While these house­holds showed strong com­mit­ment dur­ing the chal­lenge, the dis­ap­pear­ance of the stim­uli at the end of the game caused their atten­tion to wane. Some admit to hav­ing lost their ‘good’ habits a few months or years later.
• The dis­il­lu­sioned: house­holds who, para­dox­ic­ally, were already com­mit­ted to a low-energy approach, but who were not fur­ther stim­u­lated by the chal­lenge. These par­ti­cipants regret not hav­ing learnt new prac­tices to bring about a deep­er or more struc­tur­al change in their life­styles. For these dis­il­lu­sioned par­ti­cipants, the challenge’s incent­ives – in par­tic­u­lar the meas­ure­ment of reduc­tions in elec­tri­city con­sump­tion com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year – were not effect­ive, since most of the pro­posed eco-actions had already been integ­rated into their own routines.

This data is explor­at­ory and does not allow us to assess the con­tri­bu­tion of dif­fer­ent pro­files to the game. Future quant­it­at­ive research will enable this to be meas­ured. These ini­tial res­ults raise ques­tions about the effect­ive­ness of gami­fic­a­tion in ini­ti­at­ing a change in beha­viour. If gami­fic­a­tion is to be suc­cess­fully integ­rated over the longer term, it will be neces­sary to take great­er account of every­day con­straints and provide bet­ter sup­port for house­holds. Finally, while gami­fic­a­tion can ini­ti­ate indi­vidu­al changes, their sta­bil­ity over time depends on more struc­tur­al changes.

Ref­er­ences: Chamaret, C., Guérineau, M., & May­er, J. C. 2023. When say­ing “enough” is not enough: How cul­tiv­at­ing house­holds’ mind­ful­ness through gami­fic­a­tion can pro­mote energy suf­fi­ciency. Energy Research & Social Sci­ence, 105: 103294.