Beth Karlin
Candidate for Ph.D. in Social Ecology
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense
Wednesday, April 23rd , 2014
Social Ecology I, Room 112
1:00 - 3:00 PM
Residential Energy Feedback: Research, Technology, and Potential for the Informed Home
Research Summary: Scientists and elected officials agree that climate change is an issue that can no longer be ignored and residential energy use is a prime target for reducing emissions, accounting for over 20% of annual emissions. One promising strategy for promoting conservation is the provision of feedback about energy use. Feedback -- the process of giving people information about their behavior to reinforce and/or change behavior--is receiving increasing attention due to changes in technology and infrastructure that allow information to be collected, processed, and sent back to consumers quickly and cheaply. Many programs and products have emerged in recent years, demonstrating political and technical potential for wide-scale provision of energy feedback. However, past work has been critiqued for its lack of theoretical rigor; many have called for more attention to the conditions under which theories are successful in explaining conservation. This research presents an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach to understanding the role of feedback in residential energy conservation through five distinct, yet interrelated approaches: (1) literature review and integration into a new Eco-Feedback Intervention Theory (eFIT) (2) meta-analysis of past research on residential energy feedback, (3) taxonomy of energy feedback technology, (3) mixed-methods analysis of naturalistic energy feedback users, and (4) introduction and psychometric testing of a Usability Perception Scale (UPscale). As a whole, it seeks to extend what is known about energy feedback and to make suggestions for future research and practice. While there much research addressing whether feedback works, there has been little research into the more nuanced questions of how and for whom it works best. The present research aims to address this need.
Biography: Beth founded and directs the Transformational Media Lab in the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA), where she studies the psychology of leveraging new media and technology for social impact. Current projects investigate public acceptance of technology, documentary film, and digital activism. Beth has over a dozen publications in venues ranging from Peace Studies to Persuasive Technology and lectures regularly on Transformational Media and the Psychology of Sustainability. She is active in the American Psychological Association's Division 34 (Environmental Psychology), currently serving as Treasurer and Program Chair for the 2014 Convention. Beth holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Redlands and a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from California State University, Long Beach. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she spent a decade working in K-12 education, holding positions as a teacher, counselor, curriculum consultant, and school administrator. After graduation, Beth will be staying at CUSA and working on the NSF-funded Flood RISE project, investigating the role of parcel-level flood modeling coupled with transformative communication strategies to improve flood resilience. The project aims to articulate a strategy for effectively translating climate science into actionable information to catalyze behavioral change.
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Dan Stokols (Chair), Dr. Richard Matthew, and Dr. Joanne Zinger