Encouraging Energy Conservation Through Information Display: A New Approach

Much study is required on how human behaviour affects resource consumption. Not only are Human Factors Engineers well equipped to study how to shape human behaviour, but contributors to conservation literature have asked for their involvement in the domain of energy conservation. This study took a novel, systematic, human-factors approach to providing feedback on energy consumption by testing the effects of providing three levels of feedback on conservation performance. The results showed that providing physical, functional, and task-based information aided performance more than physical information alone, but no more than providing physical and functional information together. More research is required to determine if physical and task information alone could achieve the same result, if study results would differ when two opposing task goals were given, and if the varying levels of feedback have a greater effect on novices.MAS