Digital sustainability for energy-efficient behaviours: a user representation and touchpoint model

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Date
2024-07-08
Authors
McCarthy, Stephen
Ertiö, Titiana
Fitzgerald, Ciara
Kahma, Nina
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Springer
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-024-10509-7
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Abstract
In response to climate change, nations have been tasked with reducing energy consumption and lessening their carbon footprint through targeted actions. While digital technologies can support this goal, our understanding of energy practices in a private household context remains nascent. This challenge is amplified by the ‘invisible’ nature of users’ interaction with energy systems and the impact of unconscious habits. Our objective is to explore how touchpoints embedded in digital sustainability platforms shape energy-efficiency behaviours among users. Building on data from semi-structured interviews and a two-hour co-creation workshop with 25 energy experts in the ECO2 project, we first identify three user representations of relevance to such platforms: energy-unaware, living in denial, and energy-aware and active. Our findings suggest that ‘static’ user representations (based on user demographics and average consumption) are giving way to socio-cognitive representations that follow users’ journeys in energy efficiency. We then develop a set of design principles to promote sustainable energy behaviours through digital sustainability platforms across user-owned, social/external, brand-owned, and partner-owned touchpoints. An analysis of user feedback from the ECO2 project shows support for our design principles across users’ journeys. Of 62 respondents covering all three representations, 76% of them intended to “implement changes in terms of energy consumption and energy efficiency”.
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Keywords
Digital sustainability , Energy efficiency , Multimethod study , Green IS , User journeys , Touchpoints , User representations
Citation
McCarthy, S., Ertiö, T., Fitzgerald, C. and Kahma, N. (2024) ‘Digital sustainability for energy-efficient behaviours: a user representation and touchpoint model’, Information Systems Frontiers, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-024-10509-7
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/16115
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Business Information Systems - Journal Articles
Cork University Business School - Journal Articles
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© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.