Behaviour change and incentive modelling for water saving:

first results from the SmartH2O project

Jasminko Novak, Mark Melenhorst, Isabel Micheel, Chiara Pasini, Piero Fraternali, Andre Rizzoli

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Motivating households to savewater

Key question:Howcan usersbe motivated to sustainably changetheir waterconsumption behaviour and how smartmeterfeedbackcansupportthis process?

InSmartH2Owehavedeveloped abehavioural changesupportsystemto encourage household watersaving.

Currentwork• Incentivemodeland behavioural changeapproachfor the

SmartH2Osystem.Key elements:• Smartmeterfeedback,consumption visualisations,and gamification

• Firstevaluation results from areal-world pilot

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Changing household waterbehaviour

MonitoringActionContemplationPre-contemplation

Changing waterconsumption behaviour isperceived asamultistage processDifferentstages,differentneeds,differentincentives

Transtheoretical modelofbehavioural change(Prochaska &DiDeclemente,1992)

Therole ofgamification:the use ofgamedesignelements innon-gamecontexts(Deterding,2011)• Virtual,social,and physical rewards keepusersengaged• Rewards areinterwoven withmechanisms that promote behavioural change.• Ongoing usage ofthe SmartH2Osystemisexpected to build intrinsic motivation,

resulting inasustainable changeofbehaviour

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SmartH2Oincentivemodel

MonitoringActionContemplationPre-contemplation

Waterconsumption feedback

Actionable tips Actionable tips

Virtual,social,physical rewards

Self-setgoals

Hybrid onlineand cardgames

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SmartH2Oinaction:consumption

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Water consumptionn

Impactofwatersaving

Rewarding watersaving behaviour

Easilyunderstandablevisualisation

Comparison w/pastbehavior

Rewardinggoalsetting

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SmartH2Oinaction:gamification

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Virtual,social,physical rewards

watersaving

Pointsarecollectedonfourdifferentthematicareas.TheSmartH2Osystemfeaturesbadgesandaleaderboard.

Thematicareas:

datacollection

waterefficiencyeducation

participation

Social comparisonAwardachievements

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Validation:two casestudies

LOCARNO | CH~400 smart water meters installed

VALENCIA | ES~490,000 smart water meters installed

Two real-world deployments oftheSmartH2Oplatform• Swisscasestudy (Tegna):small-scale validation

• testing and tuning oftheincentivemodeland gamification techniques• testing themeasurement infrastructure,systemand useracceptance

• Spanishcasestudy (Valencia):large-scale validation• full-scale operational roll-outofanewEMIVASAcustomerservice• validation ofSmartH2Oreal-world impactinwatersaving

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Firstresults:Swisscasestudy

Consumptionclass

Averagereduction

Low 41.2%Medium-low 26.9%Medium-high 41.2%High 21.2%Overall 33.8%

Seasonal influences accountfor25-30%ofthe reduction

Preliminaryresults inwaterconsumption reductionFirstresults ofportalwith visualisations and tips,butwithoutgamification

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Firstresults:Swisscasestudy

Status:• 49registered users• 46for theDrop!Game

Positive technologyacceptance results• Performanceexpectancy• Effortexpectancy• Attitudetowards

technology

(UTAUT,Venkatesh etal.,2003)

SmartH2O – Validation Methodology D7.2 Version 1.0

of 15 did indicate that the portal increased their chances of achieving things that are important to them (Figure 35).

Figure 33. Effort expectancy (ease of use).

Figure 34. Attitude towards using technology.

Technologyacceptance results forvisualisations and watersaving tips,notfor gamification (yet)

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Preliminarygamification results

Datashowpromising leaduseractivity onthe platform,includinginteraction with gamification,already after shorttime• Peakactivity after initial incentivesand rewards• Activitylevelremains constantafter initial peak• Usersinteract with gamification elements (e.g.badges,rewards)

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Conclusions and nextsteps

Conclusions• Behavioural psychology wasused to constructagamified incentive

modelfor areal-world application to savewater,offeringsupportto usersacross the behavioural changeprocess.

• Initial promising findings were foundinasmall-scale pilot

Future work• Large-scale validation inValenciawith potentially ~500k

households,featuring:• experimental comparison ofSmartH2Ovs.acontrolgroup• the currently presented system,extended with social sharing

features• supported by promotioncampaigns to recruit users