Psychologists hypothesize that the effectiveness of normative messaging interventions increases when individuals have more personal attachment and similarity with reference groups. Using readily available energy consumption data, it is now possible to create highly personalized reference groups based on households’ daily energy use in a non-invasive matter. However, it still remains unclear to what degree individuals perceive behavioral reference groups as a cohesive entity. Therefore, this research investigates how individuals perceive energy profile-based groups relative to more standard geographic proximity-based groups. An online survey is conducted with 1,928 U.S. adults. Individuals do not perceive the profile-based groups as very entitative groups. Also, similarity between energy profile-based group members indirectly affects individuals’ identification with the groups via group entitativity. Lastly, this indirect effect is larger than the direct effect of similarity between group members on group identification. These results imply that a better understanding of what affects group entitativity would allow interveners to create more effective normative feedback messages.
more »
« less
Residents’ Perceptions of Behavioral Reference Groups for Personalized Normative Messaging Interventions
Reporting normative feedback to residential energy consumers has been found effective at reducing residential energy consumption. Upon receiving normative feedback households tend to modify their use to become in line with group norms. The effect of normative messages is partially moderated by how personally relevant normative reference groups are to the individual. Advanced energy metering technologies capture households’ energy use patterns, making it possible to generate highly similar and relevant normative reference groups in a non-invasive manner. Unfortunately, it is not well understood how similar individuals are to other group members. It also remains unknown how much individuals identify with behavioral reference groups. Therefore, this research aims to investigate how households perceive behavioral reference groups used in normative comparisons. Survey questionnaires are collected from 2,008 participants using Amazon Mechanical Turk. It is found that while households’ behaviors are more similar when grouped based on energy use profiles than based on geographic proximity, they identify more closely with proximity-based groups. Also, members’ group identification increases as individuals have higher similarity in energy use behaviors with other group members. This implies that enhancing the identity of profile-based behavioral reference groups will lead to an increase in norm adherence, and in turn reductions in household energy use.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1705273
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10175383
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Construction Research Congress
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Normative messaging interventions have proven to be a cost-effective strategy for promoting pro-environmental behaviors. The effectiveness of normative messages is partially determined by how personally relevant the comparison groups are as well as the lag of feedback. Using readily available energy use data has created opportunities to generate highly personalized reference groups based on households’ behavioral patterns. Unfortunately, it is not well understood how data granularity (e.g., minute, hour) affects the performance of behavioral reference group categorization. This is important because different levels of data granularity can produce conflicting results in terms of group similarity and vary in computational time. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate the performance of clustering methods across different levels of temporal granularity of energy use data. A clustering analysis is conducted using one-year of energy use data from 3,000 households in Holland, Michigan. The clustering results show that behavioral reference groups become the most similar when representing households’ energy use behaviors at a six-hour interval. Computationally, less granular data (i.e., six and twelve hours) takes less time than highly granular data which increases exponentially with more households. Considering the enormous scale that normative messaging interventions need to be applied at, using less granular data (six-hour intervals) will permit interveners to maximize the effectiveness of highly personalized normative feedback messages while minimizing computation burdens.more » « less
-
Within residences, normative messaging interventions have been gaining interest as a cost-effective way to promote energy-saving behaviors. Behavioral reference groups are one important factor in determining the effectiveness of normative messages. More personally relevant and meaningful groups are likely to promote behavior change. Using readily available energy-use profiles in a non-invasive manner permits the creation of highly personalized reference groups. Unfortunately, how data granularity (e.g., minute and hour) and aggregation (e.g., one week and one month) affect the performance of energy profile-based reference group categorization is not well understood. This research evaluates reference group categorization performance across different levels of data granularity and aggregation. We conduct a clustering analysis using one-year of energy use data from 2248 households in Holland, Michigan USA. The clustering analysis reveals that using six-hour intervals results in more personalized energy profile-based reference groups compared to using more granular data (e.g., 15 min). This also minimizes computational burdens. Further, aggregating energy-use data over all days of twelve weeks increases the group similarity compared to less aggregated data (e.g., weekdays of twelve weeks). The proposed categorization framework enables interveners to create personalized and scalable normative feedback messages.more » « less
-
Food systems, including production, acquisition, preparation, and consumption, feature importantly in environmental sustainability, energy consumption and climate change. With predicted increases in food and water shortages associated with climate change, food-related lifestyle and behavioral changes are advocated as important mitigation and adaptation measures. Yet, reducing emissions from food systems is predicted to be one of our greatest challenges now and in the future. Traditional theories of environmental behavioral change often assume that individuals make “reasoned choices” that incorporate cost–benefit assessment, moral and normative concerns and affect/symbolic motives, yielding behavioral interventions that are often designed as informational or structural strategies. In contrast, some researchers recommend moving toward an approach that systematically examines the temporal organization of society with an eye toward understanding the patterns of social practices to better understand behaviors and develop more targeted and effective interventions. Our study follows on these recommendations with a study of food consumption “lifestyles” in the United States, using extant time use diary data from a nationally representative sample of Americans (n = 16,100) from 2014 to 2016. We use cluster analysis to identify unique groups based on temporal and locational eating patterns. We find evidence of six respondent clusters with distinct patterns of food consumption based on timing and location of eating, as well as individual and household characteristics. Factors associated with cluster membership include age, employment status, and marital status. We note the close connections between age and behaviors, suggesting that a life course scholarship approach may add valuable insight. Based on our findings, we identify opportunities for promoting sustainable energy use in the context of the transition to renewables, such as targeting energy-shifting and efficiency-improvement interventions based on group membership.more » « less
-
Honey bees are social insects that live in large groups called colonies, within structures known as hives. The young adult bees stay within the hive to build nests and care for the young, while the older bees leave the hive to forage for food. Honey bees store food and other valuable resources in their hives, so they are often targeted by predators, parasites and ‘robber’ bees from other colonies. Therefore, it is important for bees to determine whether individuals trying to enter the nest are group members or intruders. While it is known that social insects use blends of waxy chemicals called cuticular hydrocarbons to identify group members at the entrance to the colony, it is not clear how members of the same colony acquire a similar blend of cuticular hydrocarbons. Some previous work suggested that in some ant species (which are also social insects), colony members exchange cuticular hydrocarbons with each other so that all members of the colony are covered with a similar blend of chemicals. However, it was not known whether honey bees also share cuticular hydrocarbons between colony members in order to identify members of a hive. Vernier et al. used chemical, molecular and behavioral approaches to study the cuticular hydrocarbons found on honey bees. The results show that, rather than exchanging chemicals with other members of their colony, individual bees make their own blends of cuticular hydrocarbons. As a bee ages it makes different blends of cuticular hydrocarbons, and by the time it starts to leave the hive to forage it makes a blend that is specific to the colony it belongs to. The production of this final blend is influenced by the environment within the hive. Thus, the findings of Vernier et al. indicate that honey bees guarding the entrance to a hive can only identify non-colony-member forager bees as intruders, rather than any non-colony-member bee that happens upon the hive entrance. Honey bees play an essential role in pollinating many crop plants so understanding how these insects maintain their social groups may help to improve agriculture in the future. Furthermore, this work may aid our understanding of how other social insects interact in a variety of biological situations.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
