Papers by Francesca Cellina
PAD. Pages on Arts and Design, 2024
The shift towards the adoption of sustainable practices in energy consumption has been boosted by... more The shift towards the adoption of sustainable practices in energy consumption has been boosted by the unprecedented diffusion of digital technologies, such as smart meters
and other monitoring devices, that support households in changing their daily behaviour. However, more than just information and communication technologies are needed to foster long-lasting behaviour change toward the energy transition. Current theories suggest that behaviour changes involve multiple phases, requiring motivational systems to support pro- gress between phases and long-term maintenance of the desired behaviour.
Social Power Plus is a mobile application that guides a community of more than 200 Swiss households towards more sustainable energy consumption routines at home. The app adopts the Model of Action Phases (MAP), which identifies four phases of behaviour change (predecision, preaction, action and maintenance). Through a participatory design pro-
cess, we identified app features that, using proper data visualisation techniques, focus on providing as much actionable feedback as possible. The app also offers social network-like features that have the potential to leverage transition processes by fostering the sharing of experiences and knowledge around energy saving.
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Sustainable Cities and Society, 2024
App-based interventions are increasingly used to foster energy-sufficient household routines. Pre... more App-based interventions are increasingly used to foster energy-sufficient household routines. Previous studies rarely measure whether the effect persists in the long-term, and for the few that have, the savings effects-often estimated without a control group-are not maintained over time. To favour long-lasting effects, we posit that (i) app users should be engaged in the app design, (ii) apps should focus on collective-level features that support community building (rather than individual-level consumption feedback only), and (iii) specific app features are needed in the long-term to resist relapse. We assess the overall effect of these strategies in the ''Social Power Plus Community Energy Challenge'', an app-based intervention run in 2022 in Switzerland involving about 200 voluntary households. Quasi-experimental estimates under a weighted Difference-inDifferences approach show that on average the intervention produced nearly 5% energy savings over one full year. However, the effect was higher in the first quarter (up to 11% energy saving), becoming negligible in the last quarters. We reflect on how the three strategies did not ensure long-term effects and recommend future research to further explore the potential of community-based processes, focusing less on apps and more on collectively questioning dominant social norms around household routines.
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Sustainability, 2024
Decarbonising holiday travel is crucial for climate change mitigation: policy interventions need ... more Decarbonising holiday travel is crucial for climate change mitigation: policy interventions need to encourage less frequent trips, closer destinations, and travelling on the ground. To increase effectiveness, interventions should fit with the specific ways holidays are perceived and performed in each context. We explore the holiday behaviour of people living in a medium-sized city in Southern Switzerland (Lugano, 70,000 inhabitants), with the aim of identifying key intervention strategies for a future “community challenge” encouraging the population to take low-carbon holidays. We combine a literature review with n = 15 qualitative, semi-structured interviews that allow us to understand the reasons for taking a holiday, the favourite destination and activity types, and the transport mode choices. As Switzerland is characterised by high cultural and linguistic diversity providing the feeling of being abroad even at a short distance from home, it could be a valuable holiday destination for Swiss people themselves. Located at the centre of Europe, it is also well-connected by train with many holi- day destinations abroad. Gaps between pro-environmental attitudes and holiday behaviour suggest leveraging digital carbon trackers showing how carbon emissions compare between holiday and ev- eryday life. Also, interventions could leverage social norms via social networks, local influencers, and travel agencies.
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Travel Behavior and Society , 2024
Addressing air travel demand is a key open challenge in transitioning to a low-carbon society. In... more Addressing air travel demand is a key open challenge in transitioning to a low-carbon society. In Switzerland, where most flights are from/to nearby European countries, their substitution with night train services is a promising alternative. However, still little research investigates whether the demand for night trains is wellestablished and the motivations behind it. We aim to bridge this gap through a mixed-method study involving 389 Swiss residents who travelled by night train in 2022/23. A web survey was first conducted to identify latent classes of participants based on their daily and long-distance travel mode choices and evaluate relevant predictors of class membership. Participants of each class were then randomly selected to be involved in an in-depth interview on personal experiences and motivations underlying their choices. Results identify three classes of travellers distinguished by a predominant use of rail and public transport (greens), mixed long-distance travel mode choices and car-oriented daily mobility (pragmatists), preference for flying combined with public transport and active daily mobility (dissonants). Travel cost reduction is the only motivation significantly differentiating pragmatists and dissonants from the greens. This result suggests that fluctuations in ticket prices are the main driving force in shifting demand from flights to night trains.
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Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 2024
We engage a community of ca. 200 voluntary Swiss households in using a smartphone app that provid... more We engage a community of ca. 200 voluntary Swiss households in using a smartphone app that provides energy consumption feedback and offers peer-to-peer interaction possibilities to share experiences on household routine change. Surveys prior to and three months after app use, in-app usage analytics, and analysis of in-app posts indicate that most households preferred individuallevel consumption feedback: app-mediated peer interaction was only performed by a small household subsample, precluding community-level social learning. Most self-reported daily energy routines changed after app use, though effect size was generally small, apart from thermostat settings. Also, we found most app users were already well-informed on energy topics and engaged in energy savings at home. Future research could explore how to better reach alternative audiences for app-based interventions, and improve the effectiveness of social interactions to collectively experiment with new sustainable practices, therefore giving less prominence to individual-level app features.
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Travel Behaviour and Society, 2024
App-based Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms combining public transport, car-and micro-mobili... more App-based Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms combining public transport, car-and micro-mobility-shared services with real-time dynamic carpooling are emerging as viable alternatives to solo car use for suburban contexts. Insights from real-life implementation are however still limited. Which practical conditions may hinder the effectiveness of MaaS platforms leveraging carpooling? We tackle this question from the perspective of potential users of MixMyRide, a Swiss-based MaaS platform, based on co-design workshop sessions performed in Summer-Autumn 2022. We find four elements of practical interest, resonating with limitations already identified for carpooling. First, integrating carpooling in intermodal trips increases the number of interchanges potentially affected by delays. This requires real-time traffic information data, rescheduling tools, and features for quick interaction between platform users. Second, features to create trust between strangers are needed, which require trade-offs between strict identity check and quick registration. Third, carpooling pick-up/drop-off may either endanger safety (if bus stops are used) or require inconvenient prior agreements, negatively affecting the MaaS platform's dynamism. Fourth, carpooling offer is not granted. To accept possible discomfort in sharing personal space with strangers and time-effort to enter trip offers, drivers need specific incentives, such as sharing of travel expenses, reward vouchers by public institutions, or virtual gamification and feedback on saved emissions.
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Applied Energy, 2024
In Global North countries, persuasive apps supporting households in reducing their energy consump... more In Global North countries, persuasive apps supporting households in reducing their energy consumption are widespread, as promising policy tools for the energy and climate transition. Despite their growing diffusion, fed
by the large-scale smart meter roll-out currently ongoing in many energy systems, rigorous studies providing evidence on their effects are still missing, especially for the long-term. We address this research gap by
analysing a one-year long app-based electricity saving intervention performed in Switzerland between 2018 and 2019, involving 55 self-selected households. Adopting a quasi-experimental approach and considering four
full years of energy consumption data, we estimate the app’s average treatment effect over time and perform heterogeneity analyses on household sub-groups, on varying their characteristics and intensity of app use. The
app reduced consumption and CO2 emissions during the intervention (average treatment effect on the treated equal to 4.95%, statistically significant at the 0.05 level; Cohen’s d effect size equal to 0.35). However, one year later the effect disappeared. Our results put policies based on persuasive app use into perspective: taken in isolation, persuasive apps may exhibit limitations regarding long-lasting effects. To avoid relapse, future interventions might embed app use into broader processes explicitly aimed at redefining shared norms and conventions on household energy consumption practices, for instance within living lab processes.
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Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
Digital tools, specifically smartphone apps, have emerged as enablers of social innovation for lo... more Digital tools, specifically smartphone apps, have emerged as enablers of social innovation for lowcarbon transitions by using novel feedback to creatively engage people to act more sustainably, and thus capture the power of collective individual action. Such apps have increasingly been implemented in real-world experiments with positive results in the short-term. However critical reflection is required to look beyond this hype to understand the conditions for longer term impact, thus reaching a transformative social innovation potential. In this paper, we take two exemplary behaviour change apps and perform a cost-benefit analysis to assess the break-even point in number of users to achieve net-positive impact and discuss relevant technical, organisational, political and financial conditions that enable or impede this impact. We find that the required scale-up in users seems challenging, yet feasible. However, guaranteeing that the supportive conditions are available is necessary to warrant the focus on behaviour change apps by research and policy.
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This paper introduces a new mobility platform that favours reducing individual car use, by combin... more This paper introduces a new mobility platform that favours reducing individual car use, by combining car flexibility with advantages offered by public transport, such as punctuality, comfort, safety and low environmental impact. Such platform services are delivered by means of a smartphone app that, thanks to advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, performs multimodal vehicle routing by accounting for walking, public transport and car-pooling rides. To explore citizens’ attitudes and perceptions towards SocialCar, and assess its overall business potential, we tested a prototype version in Canton Ticino (Southern Switzerland), engaging common citizens and their everyday mobility needs. In this paper we first present the app and the route planning algorithms we developed to match travel demand and offer, commenting on the challenges to be addressed when using real-life data (shortcomings in mapping, public transport and car-pooling data). Then, we describe the methodology used to...
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Energy Research & Social Science
While reducing individual energy consumption contributes to climate change mitigation, many indiv... more While reducing individual energy consumption contributes to climate change mitigation, many individuals who share this belief fail to act on it. While behavioural interventions try to address such intention-behaviour gaps, few approaches have worked with consumers to understand the realities of their opportunities and limitations to save energy at home. We argue that co-design is well-suited to address the unique challenges of climate-relevant behaviour change and propose an abductive co-design methodology to develop a behavioural intervention with household members based on the Model of Action Phases (MAP) framework. We implement the methodology to design an energy savings app and behaviour change intervention in Switzerland. The methodology shifts participants into an expert role and elucidates their motivations, real-life challenges, and knowledge gaps to save energy. Through group problem-solving and self-reflection, participants provided design inputs which address the socio-psychological gaps to progress behaviour through the preaction, action and postaction phases of the MAP. We assess the originality and feasibility of the co-design inputs, as well as reflect on the experience of the researchers and participants during the process. We conclude that co-design provided novel inputs relevant for progressing through the behaviour change stages identified by the MAP framework.
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Energy Research and Social Science, 2023
While reducing individual energy consumption contributes to climate change mitigation, many indiv... more While reducing individual energy consumption contributes to climate change mitigation, many individuals who share this belief fail to act on it. While behavioural interventions try to address such intention-behaviour gaps, few approaches have worked with consumers to understand the realities of their opportunities and limitations to save energy at home. We argue that co-design is well-suited to address the unique challenges of climate-relevant behaviour change and propose an abductive co-design methodology to develop a behavioural intervention with household members based on the Model of Action Phases (MAP) framework. We implement the methodology to design an energy savings app and behaviour change intervention in Switzerland. The methodology shifts participants into an expert role and elucidates their motivations, real-life challenges, and knowledge gaps to save energy. Through group problem-solving and self-reflection, participants provided design inputs which address the socio-psychological gaps to progress behaviour through the preaction, action and postaction phases of the MAP. We assess the originality and feasibility of the co-design inputs, as well as reflect on the experience of the researchers and participants during the process. We conclude that co-design provided novel inputs relevant for progressing through the behaviour change stages identified by the MAP framework.
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Environmental Innovation Societal Transitions, 2023
Digital tools, specifically smartphone apps, have emerged as enablers of social innovation for lo... more Digital tools, specifically smartphone apps, have emerged as enablers of social innovation for lowcarbon transitions by using novel feedback to creatively engage people to act more sustainably, and thus capture the power of collective individual action. Such apps have increasingly been implemented in real-world experiments with positive results in the short-term. However critical reflection is required to look beyond this hype to understand the conditions for longer term impact, thus reaching a transformative social innovation potential. In this paper, we take two exemplary behaviour change apps and perform a cost-benefit analysis to assess the break-even point in number of users to achieve net-positive impact and discuss relevant technical, organisational, political and financial conditions that enable or impede this impact. We find that the required scale-up in users seems challenging, yet feasible. However, guaranteeing that the supportive conditions are available is necessary to warrant the focus on behaviour change apps by research and policy.
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Travel Behaviour and Society
In the effort to counteract problems associated with the current carbon intensive transport syste... more In the effort to counteract problems associated with the current carbon intensive transport system, app-based tools persuading mobility behaviour change have emerged worldwide. Most of such apps adopt a gamified approach and motivate behaviour change through external extrinsic motivational factors such as real-life prizes, that are attributed based on the distance travelled by non-car transport modes. Despite this approach might be effective in promoting additional leisure trips by sustainable mobility, it might keep car-based commuting habits unaltered, or even stimulate unfair app behaviour to gain points. In this paper, we focus on the Bellidea persuasive app, that was co-designed with interested citizens in a Swiss-based living lab experiment, and present how we addressed the shortcomings of prize-based rewarding systems, while also dealing with the constraints imposed by current levels of accuracy in automatic transport mode detection. We illustrate and discuss our design choices and the related algorithmic solutions by referring to the following dilemmas: "single transport modes versus modal split", "trust versus control", "dynamism versus rigidity", and "global versus local". We conclude by analysing real-life mobility data-sets collected by the Bellidea app and discussing our design solutions against their capacity to attract its target user group, namely car driver individuals.
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2020 Fifteenth International Conference on Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies (EVER)
Following the growing trend for electric passenger cars, due to their lower environmental and cli... more Following the growing trend for electric passenger cars, due to their lower environmental and climate impacts, a trend towards the electrification of public transport is emerging, particularly regarding urban buses. However, the reliability of the service offered by electric alternatives to diesel-powered buses and the costs of the related transition have not been fully explored. In this background, we simulated the transition to electric bus powertrains for two bus lines in Locarno (Southern Switzerland) and compared the currently available electric technologies and charging schemes, based on their level of operation and their overall cost. According to these simulations, "opportunity charging" schemes emerged as the most promising ones for such urban lines in Locarno. Nonetheless, in the short-term their introduction is still hindered by barriers, such as in particular: the lack of capability to guarantee the service in case of delays above three minutes, the higher cost (between 40% and 60% higher than Euro VI diesel buses, which is also hampered by cashback on diesel custom duties), the need for proper training by the transport company staff, and the time needed to install the charging stations.
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This paper introduces a mobility platform aimed at reducing individual car use by combining the c... more This paper introduces a mobility platform aimed at reducing individual car use by combining the car flexibility and comfort with the advantages by public transport, such as punctuality, safety and lower environmental impact. The platform, named SocialCar, delivers its services by means of a smartphone app, which performs multi-modal vehicle routing by accounting for walking, public transport and car-pooling rides. SocialCar was developed within a Horizon2020 project and was field tested in four European sites, engaging common citizens and their everyday mobility needs. In this paper we first present the app and the field test of the SocialCar platform we run in Southern Switzerland. We then discuss the outcomes of the field test, by presenting the challenges to be addressed when using real-life data (shortcomings in mapping, public transport and car-pooling data) and summarizing the strengths and weaknesses with respect to the potential large-scale diffusion of the SocialCar platform.
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In this paper we present results of a technology acceptance and stated intention survey delivered... more In this paper we present results of a technology acceptance and stated intention survey delivered in five European<br> sites to assess citizens' attitudes and perceptions towards a new multi-modal mobility service named SocialCar,<br> developed under a EU H2020 research project and aimed at reducing individual car use. Such a service facilitates<br> a fruitful integration between public transport and car-pooling services, by means of a smartphone application and<br> advanced artificial intelligence algorithms. Citizens' willingness to actively use the new App and to alter their<br> behavior as a result is therefore crucial for the success of the SocialCar concept and the creation of new collective<br> mobility practices. The survey provides insights on intention to use SocialCar and the related expected changes in<br> travel behavior for different groups in society. It also reveales differences between each site and highlights contex...
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2017 Global Internet of Things Summit (GIoTS), 2017
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Computers in Human Behavior, 2021
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Papers by Francesca Cellina
and other monitoring devices, that support households in changing their daily behaviour. However, more than just information and communication technologies are needed to foster long-lasting behaviour change toward the energy transition. Current theories suggest that behaviour changes involve multiple phases, requiring motivational systems to support pro- gress between phases and long-term maintenance of the desired behaviour.
Social Power Plus is a mobile application that guides a community of more than 200 Swiss households towards more sustainable energy consumption routines at home. The app adopts the Model of Action Phases (MAP), which identifies four phases of behaviour change (predecision, preaction, action and maintenance). Through a participatory design pro-
cess, we identified app features that, using proper data visualisation techniques, focus on providing as much actionable feedback as possible. The app also offers social network-like features that have the potential to leverage transition processes by fostering the sharing of experiences and knowledge around energy saving.
by the large-scale smart meter roll-out currently ongoing in many energy systems, rigorous studies providing evidence on their effects are still missing, especially for the long-term. We address this research gap by
analysing a one-year long app-based electricity saving intervention performed in Switzerland between 2018 and 2019, involving 55 self-selected households. Adopting a quasi-experimental approach and considering four
full years of energy consumption data, we estimate the app’s average treatment effect over time and perform heterogeneity analyses on household sub-groups, on varying their characteristics and intensity of app use. The
app reduced consumption and CO2 emissions during the intervention (average treatment effect on the treated equal to 4.95%, statistically significant at the 0.05 level; Cohen’s d effect size equal to 0.35). However, one year later the effect disappeared. Our results put policies based on persuasive app use into perspective: taken in isolation, persuasive apps may exhibit limitations regarding long-lasting effects. To avoid relapse, future interventions might embed app use into broader processes explicitly aimed at redefining shared norms and conventions on household energy consumption practices, for instance within living lab processes.
and other monitoring devices, that support households in changing their daily behaviour. However, more than just information and communication technologies are needed to foster long-lasting behaviour change toward the energy transition. Current theories suggest that behaviour changes involve multiple phases, requiring motivational systems to support pro- gress between phases and long-term maintenance of the desired behaviour.
Social Power Plus is a mobile application that guides a community of more than 200 Swiss households towards more sustainable energy consumption routines at home. The app adopts the Model of Action Phases (MAP), which identifies four phases of behaviour change (predecision, preaction, action and maintenance). Through a participatory design pro-
cess, we identified app features that, using proper data visualisation techniques, focus on providing as much actionable feedback as possible. The app also offers social network-like features that have the potential to leverage transition processes by fostering the sharing of experiences and knowledge around energy saving.
by the large-scale smart meter roll-out currently ongoing in many energy systems, rigorous studies providing evidence on their effects are still missing, especially for the long-term. We address this research gap by
analysing a one-year long app-based electricity saving intervention performed in Switzerland between 2018 and 2019, involving 55 self-selected households. Adopting a quasi-experimental approach and considering four
full years of energy consumption data, we estimate the app’s average treatment effect over time and perform heterogeneity analyses on household sub-groups, on varying their characteristics and intensity of app use. The
app reduced consumption and CO2 emissions during the intervention (average treatment effect on the treated equal to 4.95%, statistically significant at the 0.05 level; Cohen’s d effect size equal to 0.35). However, one year later the effect disappeared. Our results put policies based on persuasive app use into perspective: taken in isolation, persuasive apps may exhibit limitations regarding long-lasting effects. To avoid relapse, future interventions might embed app use into broader processes explicitly aimed at redefining shared norms and conventions on household energy consumption practices, for instance within living lab processes.