The focus of the Save Energy pilot at Leiden City Hall is on gathering information and providing feedback through the use of ICT. However, since the goal of the pilot is to reduce energy consumption by changing user behaviour, the contribution of psychologists from Leiden University, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, was sought. Dr Henk Staats with master’s students Alexandra Hajema and Jochem van Iterson have extended the pilot by conventional sociological methods.

One of the most important additions was to include all the employees at Leiden City Hall. Having more participants makes it possible to include several experimental and control conditions without ending up with very small groups. In this new set-up, it became possible to compare the effects of the Save Energy pilot (real time information and feedback) with conventional feedback methods.

The City Hall population was divided into four groups:

• The offices with sensors, called ‘Monitored Offices’ (MO). Employees in these offices receive a weekly e-mail containing information about their energy consumption. To be able to compare them with the other groups they were asked to fill out a questionnaire at the start and at the end of the intervention period.
• In a second group, labelled ‘Self Report Offices’ (SRO), data was collected solely through the use of self-report questionnaires. Feedback consisted of the collective answers of participants in this group.

Questionnaire were distirbuted at the start, midway-through and at the end of the intervention period.

• A control group (C) was added to check whether changes might have been due to our interventions or other factors. Participants in this group where asked to fill out a questionnaire at the start and at the end of the intervention period. They did not receive any feedback
• Finally, to see whether having filled in a questionnaire about energy use or our presence might have influenced participants, a fourth group of employees only filled out the last questionnaire. They where not approached in advance and did not receive any feedback. This group was called ‘Post-test Only’ (PO).

The questionnaire contained questions about energy consumption-related behaviour (such as: “I turn off the lights when I leave my office for…” ) and questions about attitudes on saving energy (such as: “My contribution to saving energy at City Hall Leiden makes a difference”).

The e-mails to the MO group contained information about the personal energy consumption compared to the four week average.

The brochures handed out to the SRO group contained graphs of the collective answers, as well as some basic information on how energy can be saved. In the second brochure the answers where compared with those of the first questionnaire.

Example of the weekly e-mail in Leiden pilot

The data analysis of the questionnaires is under work being analyzed. At this point it is too early to draw any firm conclusions, but some trends can be observed by just looking at the data. In both our experimental groups it appears that computer use remains unchanged, but the use of ceiling lights has declined over time. Whether these differences are statistically significant remains to be seen. It is however interesting to note that energy-saving behaviours that require relatively little effort seem to be affected, while behaviours that affect comfort (such as waiting for your computer to start up) are not.

” These findings provide us with interesting new questions, which we hope to answer in the second intervention period, which is planned for October this year”, says Dr Henk Staats from Leiden University Department of Social and Organizational Psychology.

Text: Alexandra Hajema and Jochem van Iterson