Evaluation of an interactive visualization tool to increase energy literacy in the building sector

Abstract

The building sector, and especially residential households and office buildings, account for a large share of global emissions. Meanwhile, energy literacy is extremely low amongst residents and citizens in general, leading to insufficient evaluations of energy efficiency measures and technology equipment for buildings. To address this issue, we develop a research model and design an experiment to evaluate the ability of a website with interactive and vivid features to convey information in an engaging way, thus increasing the users’ enjoyment and their intention to (re)-use and recommend the website as well as the usefulness for information retrieval and technology evaluation. We conduct an experiment with two treatments in which the participants interact with an animated and a static website, respectively. While participants’ self-assessed knowledge improvement is statistically higher in the animated treatment, no difference was found in tested knowledge assessment or technology-specific knowledge. We find that the vividness of the website plays an important role for both the utilitarian and hedonic purpose of the website. However, somewhat contrasting to existing theories, interactivity did not increase enjoyment or diagnosticity.