Invisible Influence
Page 18
But what about your household energy use? How much power you or your family are using in your home or apartment. Have you checked that today? This week? Ever?
Energy use is one of the biggest challenges facing society. But while everyone realizes it’s important, solving the problem may be less about technology and more about social influence.
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Climate change is one of the most pressing global concerns of the twenty-first century. Regardless of your political bent, it’s tough not to at least acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence that temperatures are rising. Glaciers are retreating and subtropical deserts are expanding. Extreme weather events such as droughts and heavy snowfalls are more frequent, species of plants and animals are vanishing, and food security is threatened as crop yields decrease.
Energy use lies at the core of these global warming trends. Burning fossil fuels generates carbon dioxide, and greenhouse gases emitted from cars, factories, and power plants continue to rise. As the world economy grows, people are using more and more energy. It takes energy to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It takes energy to power our computers and run our factories. And it takes energy to get us to work and back home again. As more of the world industrializes, a greater and greater strain is put on our natural resources.
Something has to give. Either we figure out a way to cut down and clean up energy use, or the world is on a course for some unsettling changes.
Many of the proposed solutions are sizable in scale. Government regulations such as capping the amount of carbon dioxide power plants can produce or standards that require automakers to achieve a certain number of miles per gallon. Other solutions focus on new technologies and alternative energy. Solar and wind farms have become more prevalent, and exciting developments in geothermal energy have enabled us to harness the warmth of the earth’s core.
Attempts to shift consumer behavior also focus on big changes. Buy an Energy Star washer that saves water and uses less energy per load. Swap out your old lightbulbs for compact fluorescents that may last up to ten times longer. Even your attic can be improved through more effective insulation.
One of the simplest solutions, though, is just getting people to conserve energy. Flip the lights off when you leave the room and take shorter showers. Turn the heat down a degree or two in the winter and leave it on low when you leave the house. When added up across the population, small changes in energy conservation can have a big impact.
So how do we get people to change their behavior?
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If you had to pick someone who would revolutionize the power industry, Dan Yates would have been an unlikely choice. An expert pole vaulter from San Diego, Yates came to Harvard with almost shoulder-length hair. He graduated a few years later with a degree in computer science and an interest in entrepreneurship.
Yates moved to San Francisco, and after a short stint with one company, he cofounded an educational assessment software business with a classmate from Harvard. The company did well, and after three years had over 140 employees and close to 500 school districts as customers. Publishing powerhouse Houghton Mifflin became interested, and Yates and his cofounder sold the business.
After working at Houghton for a year, Yates needed a break. So he and his wife planned a yearlong adventure they would never forget. They bought a used Toyota 4Runner, started in Alaska, and traversed the entire length of the Pan-American Highway. Around 30,000 miles down to Ushuaia, on the southernmost tip of Argentina.
It was a beautiful journey. They saw rare animals in southwest Bolivia and majestic tree canopies in the cloud forest of Costa Rica.
But Yates and his wife also witnessed lots of environmental devastation. Acres of rain forest that had been leveled. Patches of brush and nature that had been set ablaze to clear the area for farming. Yates came back from the trip wondering what he could do to help the environment.
With another classmate from Harvard, Alex Laskey, Yates started thinking about ways to reduce energy waste. He and his partner bandied around a bunch of ideas. Some around solar power and some around reducing emissions.
But the most promising direction came when Yates looked at his electricity bill. It was a mess. Systems delivery charges, power adjustments, and regulatory fees, not to mention confusing terms such as kilowatt hours and therms. There were dozens of fields to pay attention to, and the information was hard, if not impossible, to parse. Yates thought there could be something better. “I didn’t understand what kilowatt hours were; I didn’t know what therms were. I didn’t care to know. I just wanted to know how much energy I used compared to my neighbor or something else I could understand.”13
Yates wasn’t alone. Most people find their energy bills so confusing that they don’t even try to understand the details. They just pay the bill every month and move on.
Maybe social influence could help.
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San Marcos is a great place to study energy conservation.14 Thirty-five miles north of San Diego, the city is tucked just inland off where Interstate 5 hugs the coast. Southern California is known for its sunshine, and San Marcos doesn’t disappoint. The city gets less than half the amount of rain as the rest of the United States and is sunny more than 260 days a year.
In the winter, though, San Marcos can get cold enough that people need to turn on the heat. And when summer swelters, residents blast air-conditioning. The broader area is also plagued by drought, and every few years restrictions kick in around water use. People can only wash their cars certain times of day, and residents can only water their lawn certain days of the week, depending on where they live. Citizens aren’t thinking about energy use all the time, but it’s lurking in the background.
One dry summer day, over a decade ago, Professors Bob Cialdini, Wes Schultz, Jessica Nolan, Noah Goldstein, and Vladas Griskevicius ran a simple experiment in San Marcos.
Graduate students went door-to-door in the community, delivering persuasive messages promoting energy conservation. Each household received a door hanger (similar to the DO NOT DISTURB sign at a hotel) encouraging people to use less energy. The door hanger promoted using fans, taking shorter showers, and turning off the air-conditioning at night.
When trying to change behavior, energy conservation campaigns usually focus on one of three overarching appeals: saving money, helping the environment, or promoting social responsibility. To test which type of appeal was more effective, homes were divided into groups, and each group received different messaging.
Some homeowners received an appeal that highlighted saving money. When talking about fans, for example, the appeal stated, “Summer is here and the time is right for saving money on your home energy bill. How can you save money this summer? By using fans instead of air conditioning! Why? According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you could save up to $54 per month by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool in the summer.”
A second group got an environmental message. It encouraged people to “Protect the Environment by Conserving Energy. Summer is here and the time is right for reducing greenhouse gases. How can you protect the environment this summer? By using fans instead of air conditioning! Why? According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you can prevent the release of up to 262 pounds of greenhouse gases per month by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool this summer! Using fans instead of air conditioning—The Environmental Choice.”
A third group received a message about being good citizens: “Summer is here and we need to work together to conserve energy. How can you conserve energy for future generations? By using fans instead of air conditioning! Why? According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you can reduce your monthly demand for electricity by 29% by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool this summer! Using fans instead of air conditioning—The Socially Responsible Choice.”
In addition to passing out different appeals, the researchers also measured how much energy differ
ent households used, both before and after they received the conservation messages.
Most people guessed that the environmental appeal would work best. Not leaps and bounds better than talking about saving money or helping the community, but at least somewhat more effective.
But they were wrong. None of the appeals worked. The conservation messages had zero impact on energy consumption. Whether the appeals encouraged people to help the environment, save money, or just be a good citizen, people didn’t budge. They didn’t use any less energy than they had before. It was almost as if the messages had never been delivered at all.
Fortunately, the researchers also tried a fourth appeal. Rather than seeking to convince people to conserve energy by pointing out different reasons for doing so, this appeal simply highlighted social norms; what other people in the community were doing. “When surveyed, 77% of your neighbors use fans instead of air-conditioning to keep cool in the summer. Turn off your air conditioning and turn on your fans.”
And people did. Households that received this message decreased their energy use significantly. And this reduced consumption persisted even weeks after they received the last appeal. Simply telling people that their neighbors were saving energy led them to conserve more themselves.
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Building on these findings, Yates and Laskey saw an opportunity. Social norms could provide a simple and cost-effective way to reduce people’s energy use. Coupling usage data with information about what others were doing could make for a more effective energy bill.
Their company, Opower, now works with more than one hundred utility companies worldwide. Opower sends consumers carefully targeted energy reports. Rather than confusing terminology, the reports help consumers understand how much energy they are using by putting their usage in context. Designed based on the San Marcos study findings, the energy reports show consumers their consumption relative to similar households nearby. Whether they are using more or less energy than their peers.
Social comparison information motivates consumers, but the reports don’t stop there. They pair that information with specific customized steps different consumers can take to save energy: replacing certain electronics, turning off lights, and adjusting the settings on the television.
These programs lead people to reduce their energy consumption by around 2 percent.15 For a given person, this decrease may not seem huge, but aggregated across the country the impact is staggering. Since their launch, Opower’s programs have helped save more than 6 terawatt-hours of energy.16 That’s 6 trillion watt-hours, or the equivalent to taking all the homes in Alaska and Hawaii, more than 2.1 million people, off the power grid for an entire year.
Opower hasn’t just saved energy though; it has also helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The cumulative impact of these reduced emissions is equal to saving more than twenty-four thousand football fields’ worth of American forests or taking almost all the cars in Chicago off the road for a year.
Not bad for a little feedback about performance relative to others.
Interestingly, when asked in advance about whether this appeal would work, most San Marcos residents thought it would fail. Did they care about whether their friends and neighbors were conserving energy? A little, but they said that wasn’t as important to them as helping the environment or saving money.
But they were wrong. As people often do, they underestimated how big an impact others have on behavior.
* * *
It’s clear that others can motivate us to work harder or save energy, but does it matter how our performance stacks up to theirs?
THE UPSIDE OF LOSING
You may not be into sports betting, but imagine for a moment that someone gave you $10,000 to bet on a basketball game. At halftime, you choose whichever team you think will win. If you win, you get to keep the money, and if you lose, well, you end up with nothing.
After pinching yourself at your good fortune (and your friend’s generosity), you focus on picking which team to bet on. It’s a fast-paced game and both teams show promise. The lead changes back and forth until one team goes on a run to lead by eight points. The other team charges back, closing the gap and resulting in another string of lead changes. At the end of the first half, one team (call them the Washington Winners) is ahead of the other team (call them the Louisville Losers) by a point.
Which team would you bet your $10,000 on to win? The team that is winning or the team that is losing?
If you’re like most people, you probably picked the team that was winning. After all, whether fighting to win a tough game or trying to be the top salesperson in your office, intuition suggests that being ahead increases the chance of winning. Hockey teams leading after the first period win over two-thirds of their games, and baseball teams leading after three innings win over three fourths of the time. Basketball is no different. Teams that are winning tend to win and this tendency gets stronger as the lead gets larger. Teams ahead by four at halftime, for example, win about 60 percent of games. Teams up by eight win over 80 percent of the time.
This tendency should come as no surprise. Teams that are winning tend to be better teams. That’s partially why they’re ahead.
Losing teams also have further to go to win. Mechanically, they have to score that many more points than their opponents if they hope to pull out a victory.
But could being behind sometimes be a good thing? Could losing sometimes actually make people more likely to win?
* * *
One of the most enjoyable, yet challenging things I’ve ever done was coach youth soccer. I was looking for a fun extracurricular activity in college, something that would take my mind off school, when a friend mentioned a Nike program that encouraged college kids to teach youth sports. My dad had coached when I was young, and I had always loved soccer, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
For the next few months, I spent every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon with eighteen boys from the East Palo Alto division of the American Youth Soccer Organization. I was part teacher, part chaperone for a group of wonderful but crazy eleven- and twelve-year-old boys. We ran laps to improve conditioning, did passing drills to develop teamwork, and dribbled around cones to build confidence and competence. We also did a lot of goofing off and chasing each other around the field. I wasn’t the best coach, but I tried to impart what little knowledge I had about the game and help them become better players.
In general, we were a strong team. We had a tall, smart-aleck forward with a deft touch and another shorter speedster who scored a lot of goals. We had a couple of strong defenders and some crafty midfielders who never seemed to tire of running up and down the field.
But when it came to games, we were a mixed bag. Sometimes we played great. The first time the kids executed a “give-and-go,” I almost cried. It was amazing to see them internalize what we had learned in practice.
Other times we just fell apart. Something we had drilled dozens of times week after week just didn’t seem to stick. No matter how many times we practiced, we could never make it work.
As a coach, there was little to do but pace the sidelines. It’s one thing to have a plan about how to get better at something, but it’s another to try to motivate others. I could substitute here and there, but the kids controlled the game.
The one chance I had to shake it up was at halftime. We’d form a halfhearted circle in the grass, the kids would guzzle water and eat orange slices, and we’d talk tactics. What we were doing well and what we needed to improve. Here and there I tried to throw in a bit of inspiration. A little bit of “You can do it!” or “Go out and get ’em!” The kids would then go play the second half, mostly indifferent to whatever I’d tried to highlight during the break.
But while the speech didn’t seem to change how we played, whether we were winning or losing did. If we were winning or tied going into the break, we played okay. Sometimes we’d win and sometimes we’d lose. But if we were losing at halftime, something different happened. T
he kids seemed more motivated. We’d go into the half down 0–1 and come out winning 3–2. Or we’d be down two goals, 1–3, but finish the game winning 5–3. We seemed to play better when we were behind.
As a coach, this drove me nuts. If we could come from behind and win, why couldn’t we play that well all the time? It was clear we had the skills and the drive, so why did it only seem to come out when we were losing?
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There are many reasons any one team might win or lose any one game: team chemistry, skill, home-field advantage, even the weather. But might my team’s performance illustrate a larger pattern?
Behavioral economist Devin Pope and I decided to find out. Soccer is a low-scoring sport, and it would be tough to amass enough kids’ games to form a meaningful dataset, so we examined professional basketball instead.
We analyzed more than fifteen years of play. Almost twenty thousand NBA games overall. Everything from David Robinson’s games with the Spurs to Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett’s games with the Celtics. We recorded the score at halftime, as well as which team ended up winning the game.
Consistent with the proverbial home-team advantage, teams were more likely to win when they played at home than on the road. Better teams, as indicated by a higher season winning percentage, were also more likely to win. And, not surprisingly, the further ahead teams were at halftime, the more likely they were to win. For every two points a team was doing better relative to its opponent (e.g., up by two versus tied or up by four instead of two), they were around 7 percent more likely to win the game.
This makes sense. Winning leads to winning.
Except at one place. Right around zero. Right where teams shifted from losing to winning.