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Campus Conservation Nationals: Lessons Learned by Competing to reduce Dormitory Water and Electricity Use
Presented by John Edmund Peterson and Andrew deCoriolis
AASHE 2011
Overview of CCN 2010
- resource use reduction
- engage, educate, motivate, and empower
- 3 weeks
- common web platform
- dorm v. dorm
- school v. school
- manual data entry v. real-time
- common baseline
Key features of technology
- intra campus
- inter campus
- commitments on facebook
- twitter feed
- Unite equivalents
- more accessible to all students
Summary
- total savings
- dorm statistics
- best performing schools
Evaluation process
- recorded energy and water consumption in competing dorms
- percent change between periods
- tracked use of the website
- post competition participant survey
- post competition organizer survey
Participant survey response statistics
- diversity of institutions that responded
- mostly freshmen and sophomores
- mostly female
Resource use consciousness
- generally people were very aware of their resource use
- making decisions to minimize
- they believe their resource use has impacts
- feel they have limited control over dorm wide consumption
What concerns motivate conservation?
- future generations
- my own well being
- concern for people
- concern for animals
- concern for country
- well being of others
- financial well being of my college
Competition: awareness and participation
- students who knew their dorm wast participating
- students who felt their hall mates knew about the competition
Empower and motivate?
- felt motivated to compete, but less empowered by it
what aspects were motivational
- dorm v. dorm is most important
- a multi-school event made me feel part of something larger
- floor v. floor but this is hard to do
- schools in athletic conference
- peer institutions
- it is demotivating to be a loser
Conservation strategies
- turning off lights
- turn off faucets
- shorter showers
- use power strip
- talked to hall mates about conserving resource
- got engaged in environmental activism
- swapped out an incandescent light bulb for cfl
- got ride of mini-fridge
- electricity reduction in dorms significantly related to residents who turned off lights
- water reduction in dorms significantly related to residents who took shorter showers
web interface
- page views
- unique visitors
- viewing time
- all increased during competition
- reduction commitments
performance of dorms
has to do with organization effort
Are reductions sustained?
- was not measured for the last CCN
- but their was intent to continue to conserve
Connectedness with nature
- positively correlated with many measures
- strong predictor of behavior
- highest connectedness
- significantly lower baseline use
- significantly lower electricity reduction
- less page views
Barrier and benefit research
- what makes it difficult to conserve electricity
- what makes it difficult to conserve water
- what are the benefits of reducing your water and electricity use
- needs v. desire
- apathy
- things outside of personal control
- scale of impact
organizers
- posters
- social networking sites
- articles in college newspaper
- tabling
- ads on college website
- events during competition
- guerilla marketing
- articles online
- kick-off event
take home points
- environmental motivation skewed toward global and future concerns
- social motivations are more local
- competition links local and global motivations
- students feel more motivation than empowerment
- competition has potential to reach beyond the choir
- social diffusion
- best at engaging those that are least connected with nature
Campus conservation nationals 2012
race to a gigawatt
