Transform Me! An Experience of Energy Consumption

Abstract

The consumption of energy in households is a large contributor to CO2 emissions and one of the negative drivers of climate change. Denmark is one of the leading countries in promoting sustainability and sustainable actions from a national level. However, household energy consumption stands for almost a third of the total energy consumption in Denmark, hence, it can be argued that in order to reduce such energy consumption the responsibility also has to come down to an individual level. It has been seen that individuals are becoming more aware of sustainability issues and are ready to take actions to fight climate change. However, due to the fact that household energy consumption is often perceived as psychologically distant, consumers have a hard time understanding and relating the impact of these habitual behaviors to sustainability. Consequently, research on how to motivate and engage consumers to act more sustainably in the area of household energy consumption is needed. This study takes an inductive and qualitative approach to gain insights into the behaviors of young consumers from the millennial generation in Denmark and investigate whether gamification can be used to transform these behaviors to become more sustainable. By investigating the full scope of their motivations and barriers towards household energy consumption and by analyzing their personal transformational experiences, the study aims to understand how a gamification experience should be approached to result in a change of behavior. Based on our findings, we concluded that gamification can provide a transformation of the young consumers household energy behavior. However, the gamification needs to be designed as an engaging experience containing certain elements well known from the transformational theory in order to foster such a transformation. Subsequently, these findings can be used by both profit and non-profit actors with the purpose of further improving and encouraging transformations in consumers’ behaviors in the area of household energy consumption.