Impact of information sharing on energy behavior: A system dynamics approach

Growth of population and moving towards overconsumption and over pollution are significant threats to the environment and therefore necessitate moving towards sustainability approaches. Reducing energy consumption cannot be achieved by only changing the regulations. In practice, individuals´ attitudes highly impact their energy behaviors, and therefore, changing behaviors is essential for improving energy conservation. In this paper, we investigate the impact of information sharing in change of individuals´ behaviors and in particular their energy behaviors. We show that with improved access to information on energy consumption, residents make better use of energy, resulting in increased sustainability of the city. We focus on information and feedback strategies to improve the individuals´ energy behavior and ultimately to decrease energy consumption. We use a system dynamics model to explore the impact of information technologies on behavioral change of households with regards to energy consumption. The model is created using the literature as a basis for the causal relations between the various variables. We will use our model to quantify the effect of access to energy information on consumption reduction utilizing the data provided by the OPOWER company in 2008 on the energy consumption of households in Sacramento Municipal Utility District in the United States.