How Viable are Energy Savings in Smart Homes?:A Call to Embrace Rebound Effects in Sustainable HCI

Bremer, Christina and Gujral, Harshit and Lin, Michelle and Hinkers, Lily and Becker, Christoph and Coroamă, Vlad Constantin (2023) How Viable are Energy Savings in Smart Homes?:A Call to Embrace Rebound Effects in Sustainable HCI. ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies.

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Abstract

As part of global climate action, digital technologies are seen as a key enabler of energy efficiency savings. A popular application domain for this work is smart homes. There is a risk, however, that these efficiency gains result in rebound effects, which reduce or even overcompensate the savings. Rebound effects are well-established in economics, but it is less clear whether they also inform smart energy research in other disciplines. In this paper, we ask: to what extent have rebound effects and their underlying mechanisms been considered in computing, HCI and smart home research? To answer this, we conducted a literature mapping drawing on four scientific databases and a SIGCHI corpus. Our results reveal limited consideration of rebound effects and significant opportunities for HCI to advance this topic. We conclude with a taxonomy of actions for HCI to address rebound effects and help determine the viability of energy efficiency projects.