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2022
Report
Title
D3.5 Case study 5 report: Earnest App - A virtual community for sustainable mobility in Darmstadt, Germany
Title Supplement
Horizon 2020 Project GRETA
Abstract
The overall objective of WP3 is to gather data from case studies and the multinational citizen consultation to respond to GRETA's goal to include communities in order to deepen and advance state-of-the-art knowledge of determinants that influence the emergence of energy citizenship. WP3 deliverables are presented on a case-study basis focusing on (mostly) qualitative data collected by the case studies within the tasks of WP1 and WP3. Moreover, the case study reports provide input for the synthesis of project results and the development of policy recommendations in WP6. This case study report #5 outlines the findings of the Earnest App case study in Darmstadt, Germany, in regard to GRETA's objectives to understand better how energy citizens act and interact (Objective 2) and to observe and potentially develop behavioural approaches and policies for facilitating energy citizenship (Objective 3). The case study took place in the summer of 2022 at the University of Applied Science in Darmstadt and was led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research. The case study’s geographical scope focuses on Darmstadt and surrounding areas and explores how the use of a digital app by members of a virtual energy community affects citizens’ awareness and behaviour in regard to their mobility and energy consumption choices in everyday life, potentially fostering energy citizenship. Within the scope of WP3, the Earnest App case study applied a mixed-method approach collecting both quantitative survey data as well as qualitative data to not only assess if the use of a digital app by members of a virtual community can facilitate energy citizenship but also how and why. The findings derived from the collected data offer valuable insights for GRETA. This report illustrates how qualitative and descriptive quantitative data results indicate that the use of the app contributed to an increase in both energy awareness and sustainable mobility behaviour of research participants. Moreover, the case study's findings also point to an increase in sustainable behaviour in other sectors than mobility, such as electricity and heating consumption. This can be interpreted as spillover effects through which users start to adopt a broader sustainability view leading to further conscious actions in other related areas. Finally, the case study findings highlight the role virtual communities can play for a crucial demographic for a successful transition to a sustainable and just energy system now and in the future: young citizens. The deliverable is structured as follows. Section 1 offers a detailed description of the case study as well as the actor and policy landscape it is embedded in, and provides an overview of the case study-specific research design and methods. Section 2 provides a summary of the case study-specific research results and Section 3 analyses these results in light of the energy citizenship emergence framework developed and documented in D1.1 using data from qualitative interviews conducted within the scope of T1.3. Section 4 offers a discussion and reflection of the main analysis points before Section 5 summarizes and concludes the case study's findings.
Author(s)
Rights
Under Copyright
Language
English