One Size Does Not Fit All: Applying the Transtheoretical Model to Energy Feedback Technology Design Helen Ai He, Saul Greenberg, Elaine M. Huang University of Calgary. Calgary, AB, Canada [hahe or saul.greenberg]@ucalgary.ca,
[email protected] ABSTRACT one’s energy usage. Feedback is often presented as raw Global warming, and the climate change it induces, is an energy use (e.g., watts), personal cost (e.g., money), or en- urgent global issue. One remedy to this problem, and the vironmental impact (e.g., CO2). While feedback can be ef- focus of this paper, is to motivate sustainable energy usage fective [4], most technologies are limited as they use a behaviors by people. One approach is the development of “one-size-fits-all” solution – that is, they provide the same technologies that provide real-time, continuous feedback of feedback to differently motivated individuals, at different energy usage. However, there is one problem - most tech- stages of readiness, willingness and ableness to change. nologies use a “one-size-fits-all” solution, providing the Unless the energy consumer already holds a strong goal to same feedback to differently motivated individuals at dif- use energy sustainably [36], feedback only informs, but ferent stages of readiness, willingness and ableness to does not necessarily motivate sustainable energy action. change. In this paper, we synthesize a wide range of moti- vational psychology literature to develop a motivational Motivating sustainable energy behavior change is a psycho- framework based on the Transtheoretical (aka Stages of logically, socially, and culturally complex problem [46]. Behavior Change) Model. For each stage, we state the mo- While all perspectives offer important insights, we ap- tivational goal(s), and recommendation(s) for how technol- proach this problem from the psychological perspective.