Consumer Behavior Change via Online Integrated Demand-Side Management Leveraging Casual Social Games

Online Integrated Demand Side Management service that incents consumers to conserve energy by leveraging social networks and social gaming. The internet-based platform enables social gaming (and other internet-based) companies to gain new revenue streams by trading their in-game currency for payments from utilities for verifiable energy usage reductions and energy efficiency activities. The payments flow from the utilities to the game companies through proprietary service, with the game companies connecting via Application Programming Interface.

Consumer behavior is one of the great untapped resources in energy efficiency. However, influencing or “nudging” that behavior towards more efficient use of energy has been difficult to achieve because of low price elasticity in residential electricity usage. 1 The recent phenomenon of casual social gaming – and the growth of “virtual good” sales within those games – presents a new opportunity to create new incentives to influence behavior towards efficiency in an integrated fashion. This Emerging Technology (ET) project under the Market Behavior Study (MBS) subprogram focuses on determining the potential of an Integrated Demand Side Management (IDSM) system leveraging existing casual social and other internet-based gaming to influence consumer behavior towards greater efficiency. This project reviews a software platform (Zema) that exchanges virtual currency for verifiable energy efficiency reduction. By educating users, and potentially modifying their behavior, the software platform provides daily energy efficient feedback through hints and tips, and rewards users with virtual currency to use on the Internet game of their choice. Participants show a strong positive reaction towards the platform concept and its key features. This Social Gaming Research evaluates the overall interest in the platform concept as well as its benefits and related initiatives, among SCE customers and specifically those who play social media games. The research spans three phases, with usage of qualitative pre- and post-online web boards, and a quantitative online survey. Social gaming has the capacity to reduce energy consumption by using the platform as a way of educating SCE customers in addition to helping them save money on their energy bills and offering them a way to earn currency for virtual games. The study revealed three important areas for consideration before developing social-gaming as a full-fledged energy efficiency (EE) program: 1) offering non-gaming incentives; 2) addressing privacy and security concerns; and 3) preventing fraudulent game playing. This research is meant to provide SCE with recommendations on how to best introduce an energy efficiency-related gaming concept to SCE customers and maintain its appeal among participating social gamers.