User Involvement Matters: The Side-Effects of Automated Smart Objects in Pro-environmental Behaviour

Abstract

Automation through IoT brings with it a whole new set of societal, cognitive and ethical implications that we barely begin to address. Nonetheless, it is widely considered the panacea to overcoming the majority of global issues by many scholars with few arguments about its side-effects. The case of energy efficiency as an immediate action to overcome the climate change is not different: demand-response, smart grids or occupancy-driven energy management systems by using IoT crowd the current research agenda. Thus, there are scarce studies reporting mid or long term effects of IoT-mediated automation beyond quantitative-based energy reductions (e.g. emotional feelings derived to interact with smart devices, complacency associated with them or perceived value of IoT throughout the time are left apart). Based on the lack of evidence, this article reports the results of a study conducted in 10 workplaces during more than one year where we found that embedding IoT technologies to automate appliances of shared use in favour of comfort to save energy is associated with a reduction of the subjects' confidence in technology as a means to solve all environmental current problems. Moreover, it was found that preventing people from the control of these smart appliances reduce the willingness of people to act in favor of the environment.