Making It Easier To Be Green: A Single Case Demonstration of the Effects of Computer Defaults To Conserve Energy in a University Computer Lab

Abstract

Educational buildings and university campuses represent some of the most computer-dense settings in the United States. Unfortunately, the administrators and users in these settings often lack proper energy saving strategies, resulting in excessive energy waste. Research in behavioral economics has reliably shown that effort is an inhibitory factor in changing a variety of behaviors. That is, humans have a tendency to choose the option that requires the least amount of effort, regardless of whether that option is the best one. Thus, it might be inferred that interventions requiring greater effort for computer users to conserve energy are unlikely to be effective. This study highlights a successful cost-cutting application of default energy savings settings in a campus computer-testing laboratory. Default settings applied by the research team did not require effort on the part of users and resulted in computers powering-down after a relatively short period of inactivity. A cost analysis revealed modest fiscal and electricity savings among the small number of computers included in the study. However, extrapolating these modest savings across the many hundreds of work stations typically found on university campuses suggests a substantial savings would result from the adoption of the intervention described herein. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.