Information systems and behavioural change: feedback interventions to curb the consumption of natural resources

High hopes are placed in digital feedback interventions to reduce resource consumption. We report the results of real-time feedback from five randomised controlled trials with more than 394,500 observations. Study 1 shows that real-time feedback related to a specific behaviour can result in savings of over 20 per cent. Study 2 shows that such feedback also works in settings with zero financial incentives and without volunteer selection bias. In a similar setting, we show that carbon offset programmes may increase consumption, yet that feedback can counteract this adverse effect by making the individual’s resource use salient (study 3). In study 4, we investigate underlying mechanisms and find that the majority of individuals automatically set goals by themselves in response to numerical feedback and that these goals tend to be more ambitious than what the literature suggests. Finally, study 5 evaluates the effect of different externally given goals in combination with real-time feedback.