CH-24-C046 - Social Energy Game for Smart and Energy-Efficient Multi-Unit Residential Building: Mechanism Design

Social energy games are crucial in eco-feedback research, fostering household energy awareness and motivating community-level energy-saving behaviors. To maximize the impact on building energy efficiency, it is vital to pair these games with an effective incentive mechanism that accounts for occupants’ decision preferences and goal attainment capabilities. This study introduces a modeling approach to design mechanisms for a collaborative social energy game that promotes heating and cooling energy efficiency in multi-unit residential communities. The games are implemented in MySmartE, a cloud-based smart home energy application deployed in an affordable housing community that includes two multi-unit residential buildings with 44 households in Indiana, USA. By analyzing the field data, we developed a utility model that captures the decision characteristics and preferences of household thermostat adjustment behaviors during the social game intervention. We modeled community decisions and investigated the resulting marginal utility of the community for various game scenarios. We propose that the mechanism framework developed in this work can be a foundation for effective incentive allocation, ensuring economic benefits for stakeholders and residents in affordable housing communities with gamified energy-saving programs.