This work details a team-based feedback approach for reducing resource consumption. The approach uses paper printing within office environments as a case study. It communicates the print usage of each participant’s team rather than the participant’s individual print usage. Feedback is provided weekly via emails and contains normative information, along with eco-metrics and team-based comparative statistics. The approach was empirically evaluated to study the effectiveness of the feedback method. The experiment comprised of 16 people belonging to 4 teams with data on their print usage gathered over 58 weeks, using the first 30-35 weeks as a baseline. The study showed a significant reduction in individual printing with an average of 28%. The experiment confirms the underlying hypothesis that participants are persuaded to reduce their print usage in order to improve the overall printing behaviour of their teams. The research provides clear pathways for future research to qualitatively investigate our findings.
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Outline
Motivation and Background
Paper consumption
Previous work and research question
Individual vs. team-based feedback
Experiment Setting
Environment
Print monitoring
Persuasive strategies
Procedure
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
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Motivation
Of the global wood harvest for “industrial uses”
42% goes to paper production, a proportion
expected to grow by more than 50 percent in the
next 50 years. (Abramovitz, “Paper Cuts”, WorldWatch Institute, 1999, p. 124)
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Previous Work & Question
Using flavoured feedback to curb paper printing
(Medland et al., 2010)
Focused on individualistic feedback
Question: “Can membership in a group be
leveraged to persuade individuals to change their
behaviour, and hence the group overall behaviour?”
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Individual-based Feedback
Individual vs. Team-based
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Outline
Motivation and Background
Paper consumption
Previous work and research question
Individual vs. team-based feedback
Experiment Setting
Environment
Print monitoring
Persuasive strategies
Procedure
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
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Case Study Environment
DERI
130 staff members
Interns, masters, PhDs, post-docs, research assistants,
research fellows, senior research fellows, professors,
technical staff, and administrative staff
20 organisational units
Reasons for printing
– Administrative printing by administrative and research staff.
– Printing research proposals, theses, academic and technical
reports.
– Printing academic papers for internal review and reading
purposes.
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Print Monitoring
Monitoring software on the print server
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Persuasive Strategies
Informative
Traditional statistics
Eco-metric statistics
Social
Comparative
Competitive
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Experimental Procedure
Data was aggregated and displayed weekly
October 2010- May 2011: Baseline (w 1-31,35)
May 2011- October 2011: Feedback provided (w31,
35-58)
Voluntary participants
Measure
Person proportional printing over all printing every week
Team Members
Unit 1 Members 1, 2, 3,4
Unit 2 Members 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Unit 3 Members 11, 12, 13
Unit 4 Members 14, 15, 16
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Outline
Motivation and Background
Paper consumption
Previous work and research question
Individual vs. team-based feedback
Experiment Setting
Environment
Print monitoring
Persuasive strategies
Procedure
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
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Results: Statistical Significance
Difference sample normally distributed
The Anderson-Darling test P-value = 0.343
Q-Q plot confirms normality
Paired t-test
Standard level of significance alpha = 0.05
P-value = 0.025
It is statistically significant to say that the feedback
method helped decrease the individuals’
proportional printing after it was applied
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Team Level Printing
All units except unit 2 reduced overall unit printing.
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Discussion
Previous survey revealed three themes
Theme 1
Any printing conducted by staff was viewed as necessary,
excepting accidents.
Theme 2
Staff viewed different metrics as relevant or alternatively,
as unnecessary for feedback on printing behaviour.
Theme 3
Staff viewed co-workers championing reduced paper use
as a helpful reminder to be conscious of how much they
were printing.
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Theme 1
All printing is necessary
About 31% of the participants – showed a slight
increase in their proportional printing
Likely that the driving force behind the non-
responsive people is Theme 1.
Any feedback method needs to address fully or
partially this theme to get better results
e.g. by changing business processes
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Theme 2
Flavoured feedback
Software in this experiment applied various
flavours in tandem
Stating the same information in different ways that
address different models of individual perception is
in fact a good feature of feedback methods
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Theme 3
Comparison and competition
Temporal comparison
Contrasts team printing performance in a week to
performance the week prior.
Social comparison
Compares printing performance on a team-to-team basis
Feedback method has been able to form an
incentive for individuals to lower printing.
Some teams did not respond
Outliers exist and affect overall unit performance
Future work: hybrid personal and team-based feedback
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Conclusions
Team-based feedback is persuasive.
Applying several strategies in tandem helps
decrease divergence of outliers
TODO
Study the effect of communities dynamics
Test hypothesis with other types of resources: e.g. energy
consumption
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