Challenging Comfort & Cleanliness Norms through Interactive In-home Feedback Systems

This paper discusses the limitations of targeting individual behaviours through information feedback systems without considering the broader socio-technical context in which decisions are made about how people use energy and water. The paper draws on recent research conducted by the author investigating the impact of interactive in-home feedback systems on practices dependent on comfort and cleanliness norms. The research found that although current feedback systems were doing little to challenge bathing, laundering, heating and cooling practices dependent upon these norms, feedback systems could be redesigned to target normative behaviours. This conclusion is made within the context of previous research on social norms which has found that people will be more likely to change their behaviours if they are benchmarked against a wider social group and given approval or disapproval for their current behaviours. Previous research shows that personalised feedback can achieve energy and water consumption savings of between 5-15 per cent [6]. However, larger gains have arguably not been achieved because information feedback does little to challenge practices that are deeply ingrained in social and cultural norms. This paper briefly summarises recent research conducted by the author on the impact of interactive feedback systems on comfort and cleanliness norms, which largely govern practices such as heating, cooling, bathing and laundering. The paper offers preliminary conclusions to suggest how feedback systems can challenge normative practices. This analysis is made within the context of the researcher’s PhD, which is exploring how interactive energy and water technologies, such as ‘smart meters’ and ‘in-home displays’, influence expectations of comfort and cleanliness in Australian households. The research discussed involved a range of ethnographic methods, such as interviews, household tours, observation and photography, with ten households from South East Water’s ‘EcoPioneer’ trial based in the south-eastern Figure 1: Ampy Email’s EcoMeter suburbs of Melbourne. The full trial involved 50 households, which each had an Ampy Email ‘EcoMeter’ in-home display system (see Figure 1). The EcoMeter plugs into any power point in the home and displays the household’s energy, water and gas consumption in real-time. The research aimed to understand how feedback systems affect expectations of comfort and cleanliness, and how they could be re-designed to challenge these norms more strongly. Normative behaviours are those which sit beyond the realm of questionable practice [13] and are so deeply ingrained in the routines of daily life that education alone will not result in their reconfiguration [9]. This is despite the fact the histories of everyday practices such as laundering, bathing, heating and cooling show dramatic variations in what is considered ‘normal’ [1, 4, 5, 11, 18]. For example, while a weekly bath was recently the norm, this has been replaced by daily or more frequent showering. Similarly, comfort practices such as opening windows, cooling the body with water, using blankets and appropriate clothing, or building thermally efficient housing, are being replaced by heating and air-conditioning [13]. Although many other norms influence individual behaviours, water and space heating and cooling (comfort norms) constitute almost 60 per cent of Australians’ energy demand in the home [7]. Similarly, the bathroom, toilet, laundry and kitchen (cleanliness norms) constitute 70 per cent of an average household’s water consumption in Melbourne [12]. However, governments, utilities and conservationists have been reluctant to challenge these norms. Shove [13, p. 17] argues that this is because ‘comfort and cleanliness constitute fine examples of non-negotiability, their meaning and importance being quite simply taken for granted.’ The EcoPioneer research supported Shove’s conclusion and attributed the lack of change in these norms resulting from the provision of feedback to two factors. Firstly, the research found that householders either didn’t understand or misunderstood the connections between the consumption data provided through the EcoMeter, and their own practices. They were left to answer questions such as: what practices does this figure on my screen relate to? And, is this figure appropriate or inappropriate for the tasks I have just undertaken? This problem is related to the way the consumption data was provided to participants, which was in the units of kilowatts, kilolitres and greenhouse gas emissions. Providing raw consumption data to householders assumes that they can understand and translate this information into energy and water services, such as air-conditioning, heating, lighting, showering, cooking and computer or TV usage [13, 14, 18, 20]. Secondly, the practices made possible by energy and water are set within wider social and cultural norms governed by notions around what it means to have a clean body, clothes or house, or to be comfortable in any given society or culture [13]. Feedback systems generally target the individual, rather than this larger context in which a household is situated. Therefore, where householders had made the connection between their consumption data and practices, they did not necessarily consider these tasks to be negotiable or changeable. Instead, they often tried to improve the practice by changing the technologies used for the task. For example some participants changed to water-efficient showerheads or energyefficient light globes (provided to all participants taking part in the EcoPioneer trial). Similarly, most participants made small efficiency changes to their practices such as taking shorter showers, doing full loads of laundry, or turning off lights and standby appliances. However, feedback rarely resulted in fundamental changes to householder norms around what it means to be clean or comfortable. Residents rarely showered or washed their clothes less, or suddenly tolerated a larger band of temperatures, although some did use the heater and air-