EcoRunner : User Experiences of a Web Based Environmental Feedback Tool Addressing Household Consumption

Feedback is generally used to monitor progress toward different goals and standards in life, and to adjust behaviour accordingly. EcoRunner was developed as a web-based feedback tool providing environmental and financial information about households’ daily consumption. This paper presents a user experience study of this feedback tool, and addresses the influences of goal-setting on the experience. The results show that people who more often set financial and pro-environmental goals in life find the tool more attractive, more useful, believing it to have influenced their current behaviour and believing it will be helpful when changing (regulating) future consumption behaviour. Conclusions are drawn that feedback tools like EcoRunner may have different effects for different subgroups in society. It is further suggested that EcoRunner could be used as a tool in education, at different levels in schools and higher education, for enlightening consumers about the relationship between household spending and environmental consequences.