Influencing Values, Attitudes and Behaviour via Interactive and Social-media technology: The Case of Energy Usage (Technical Report)

Reducing our carbon footprint is an urgent global issue. What role can interactive and social-media technologies play in addressing this challenge? How can these technologies be used to influence people to change their energy-usage behaviours? Existing solutions report limited and only short-term success due to the difficulties of making the information personalised and contextually relevant and in focusing upon behaviour rather than the values governing behaviour. The first of these issues is difficult due to the considerable variability in the lifestyles of different people and communities. The second is difficult because of the problems of identifying peoples values and relating these to energy behaviours. This paper investigates how to overcome these two difficulties by considering these issues, developing five principles relating values to influences upon behaviour change, presenting an architecture for design and reporting empirical studies that show the implications for the design of influence technologies. The empirical studies, a diary study and focus group, qualitatively evaluate how people can be influenced in making decisions about energy use behaviours.