Kalyanaraman Shankari and Janice Park and Tejomay Gadgil and Randy H. Katz and David E. Culler

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2015-7

February 17, 2015

The effects of climate change are costly and devastating but it is difficult to incentivize people to reduce their carbon footprint. E-Mission is designed to collect accurate data on a user’s travel behavior and the corresponding footprint. Accurate data helps design intelligent climate change policy intervention. The usefulness of E-Mission depends on user engagement, but this is challenging because the consequences of climate change are not salient at a personal level. The study investigates three approaches grounded in behavioral economics to display results and measures their effect on user engagement. The first version displays a data heavy visualization of results, the second converts the results into a game, and the third allows a choice between the two. Among the 20 respondents, the ‘choice’ group had the lowest drop-off rate; this indicates that allowing users to choose their own visualization is more effective than choosing one for them.

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BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Shankari:EECS-2015-7,
    Author= {Shankari, Kalyanaraman and Park, Janice and Gadgil, Tejomay and Katz, Randy H. and Culler, David E.},
    Title= {Information Display for Societal Problems: Data, Game, or Choice?},
    Year= {2015},
    Month= {Feb},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2015/EECS-2015-7.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2015-7},
    Abstract= {The effects of climate change are costly and devastating but it is difficult to incentivize people to reduce their carbon footprint. E-Mission is designed to collect accurate data on a user’s travel behavior and the corresponding footprint. Accurate data helps design intelligent climate change policy intervention. The usefulness of E-Mission depends on user engagement, but this is challenging because the consequences of climate change are not salient at a personal level. The study investigates three approaches grounded in behavioral economics to display results and measures their effect on user engagement. The first version displays a data heavy visualization of results, the second converts the results into a game, and the third allows a choice between the two. Among the 20 respondents, the ‘choice’ group had the lowest drop-off rate; this indicates that allowing users to choose their own visualization is more effective than choosing one for them.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Shankari, Kalyanaraman 
%A Park, Janice 
%A Gadgil, Tejomay 
%A Katz, Randy H. 
%A Culler, David E. 
%T Information Display for Societal Problems: Data, Game, or Choice?
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2015
%8 February 17
%@ UCB/EECS-2015-7
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2015/EECS-2015-7.html
%F Shankari:EECS-2015-7