Enhancing Environmental Citizenship and Reducing Energy Consumption through Creative Engagement with Building Users

Abstract

This paper reports on research which focuses on the impact that users` behaviour has on the energy consumption of buildings and how to effectively engage users in energy reduction strategies. The research seeks to understand how work-based communities engage with energy and evaluates the impact that building-users can have on workplace energy reduction. The work is being conducted in De Montfort University, UK, and it addresses the need to lower UK Higher Education sector emissions. The awareness that our life-styles are damaging the environment has raised questions about who should take responsibility for preventative action. Many attempts at `pro-environmental change` rely upon individualistic and rationalist assumptions. Alternatively, public participation is increasingly considered to be an important aspect in the success of behaviour-change processes. It is widely accepted that if people have the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes, they will be more likely to adopt the outcome of the decisions. This principle has been successfully applied in the context of waste management and landscape planning, but has less of a track record of application in the context of energy use. Using an action research methodology, the aim is to evaluate the use of social media as a tool to engage users in the workplace environment and then to monitor subsequent behaviours. The research, currently in its initial stages, will provide insights into how social media can be used in large organisations for facilitating communication, the exchange of pro-environmental information and the impact on behavioural change.