research-article

It's not all about "Green": energy use in low-income communities

Authors:

Tawanna Dillahunt,

Jennifer Mankoff,

Susan FussellAuthors Info & Claims

UbiComp '09: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing

Pages 255 - 264

https://doi.org/10.1145/1620545.1620583

Published: 30 September 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Personal energy consumption, specifically home energy consumption such as heating, cooling, and electricity, has been an important environmental and economic topic for decades. Despite the attention paid to this area, few researchers have specifically explored these issues within a community that makes up approximately 30% of U.S. households -- those below the federal poverty line. We present a study of 26 low-income households in two very different locations -- a small town in the Southern U.S. and a northerly metropolitan area. Through a photo-elicitation study and directed interviews, we explore the relationship between energy saving behaviors, external factors, and users' intrinsic values and beliefs. Most of our participants are committed to saving energy for non-financial reasons, even when not responsible for paying bills. Challenges to saving energy include safety and lack of control over the environment. We discuss how Ubicomp technologies for saving energy can address some of these challenges.

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Bremer CGujral HLin MHinkers LBecker CCoroamă V(2023)How Viable are Energy Savings in Smart Homes? A Call to Embrace Rebound Effects in Sustainable HCIACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36081151:1(1-24)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2023
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Index Terms

It's not all about "Green": energy use in low-income communities
1. Human-centered computing

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UbiComp '09: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing

September 2009

292 pages

ISBN:9781605584317

DOI:10.1145/1620545

General Chair:
Sumi Helal
University of Florida, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Hans Gellersen
Lancaster University, UK
,
Sunny Consolvo
Intel Labs, USA

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 30 September 2009

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Ubicomp '09: The 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing

September 30 - October 3, 2009

Florida, Orlando, USA

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UbiComp '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 31 of 251 submissions, 12%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633378
Sultana SAkter RSultana ZReza SAhmed SRzeszotarski J(2024)Understanding Environmental Sustainability and Information Practices in Global South Fish FarmingExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650831(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650831
Bremer CGujral HLin MHinkers LBecker CCoroamă V(2023)How Viable are Energy Savings in Smart Homes? A Call to Embrace Rebound Effects in Sustainable HCIACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36081151:1(1-24)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2023
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