1. Experimental Design: Manipulation of Group Influence and Control Options on Energy Use
Candace Pang1 and Elizabeth Price2; Mentors: Dr. Chien-fei Chen3, Dr. Xiaojing Xu3, Erica Davis3, and Jackson Lanier3
1 Oak Ridge High School 2 Bearden High School
3 The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
BACKGROUND
At least a quarter of energy use in commercial buildings is related to HVAC processes. For workers spending many hours in their offices, they seek to be satisfied and comfortable, but comfort isn’t very cheap. An argument stands for the benefits of the temperature setting in office spaces. Energy saving or thermal comfort? Environmentally-friendly or productivity? To observe this puzzle, a manipulation was conducted and analyzed upon workers in a shared office space. The experimental design saw the impacts of group influence and control options in relation to temperature settings.
Options
Group Influence
Scenario
Shared office
Thermostat is set at average comfort setting: 72℉
Energy efficiency temperature setting is 76℉
Participants receive a message from upper level management with one of four scenarios 3 3
Control Options 3 3
METHODS
Pre-test
Workers in the Min H. Kao building were first evaluated on their preferred temperature setting during the summer. Evaluators gave no insight to the details of the experiment, nor to typical energy efficient or thermal comfort thermostat settings.
Messages
Four messages were comprised for the manipulation based on the 2x2 matrix. They each have the same formatting and similar titles. Minor differences are apparent in the objective of each message to keep the entire experiment as consistent as possible.
Survey
After handing the participants the messages, a survey was conducted and distributed to test complete understanding and full implementation of the manipulation. To a broader sample pool in the future, the survey will be created by Qualtrics and connected to the public through AmazonMTurk.
Questions that were asked included:
What is your name?
What is your objective?
Do you have control over your temperature settings here?
Would you adjust your temperature setting in response to your message?
Now what is your preferred temperature setting?
RESULTS
CONCLUSION
Analyzation of the pre-test results revealed that the group influence with the greatest impact on the participants’ preferred temperature setting was the energy saving category.
Energy Saving ✕ Control: Increased their preferred temperature setting
Energy Saving ✕ No Control: Increase their temperature setting despite their lack of control.
Comfort ✕ Control: Generally decreased their temperature setting.
Comfort ✕ No Control: Less likely to increase their temperature settings.
7 out of 12 participants increased their temperature settings after reading these messages, however all participants adjusted their temperature closer to the optimal relative comfort vs. energy saving setting.
Citation:
This work was supported primarily by the ERC Program
of the National Science Foundation and DOE under NSF Award Number EEC