Emerging sociotechnical imaginaries – How the smart home is legitimized in visions from industry, users in homes and policymakers in Germany

The induction effect: why the rebound effect is only half the story of technology's failure to achieve sustainability

“…Our research shows that smart home users in Germany do not prioritize the overarching goal of environmental and climate protection (Quitzow and Rohde, 2021). This finding is related to our findings that, to justify the appropriateness of smart home technologies, politicians highlight the environmental benefits while the smart home industry emphasizes notions of comfort, convenience, and control (Rohde and Santarius, 2023). And a social media discourse analysis shows that, while critical actors dominate the public online discourse, they do not focus on environmental aspects but rather on issues such as surveillance, privacy and data protection, and cyber security (Rohde et al, under review).…”

“…the household, can also be grounded on a psychological rebound mechanism, e.g., on moral licensing or diffusion of responsibility: As smart heating is supposedly energy saving, people might be inclined to heat more, as they think to have done their contribution by buying an automated heating already. And indeed, qualitative results of authors of this article suggest psychological rebound effects, such as pre-heating rooms or turning on heating in rooms that respondents said they would otherwise not heat (Rohde and Santarius, 2023).…”

“…Our empirical insights are based on a quantitative survey with smart home owners in Germany with a smart heating system (N = 375), 12 user interviews, and a life cycle assessment that accounted for differences in user behavior. In addition, we conducted a twitter data analysis and a document analysis (Frick and Nguyen, 2021;Pohl et al, 2021;Rohde and Santarius, 2023).…”