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.

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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.