Demand Informatics - Working Paper

My current thinking on demand informatics in the form of a working paper - still requires much more thinking at the demand-behaviour-ICT interface and there many more connections to be made!

Behaviour Change 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

 

Having had time to further reflect on my holiday reading, in this case Drive by Daniel H. Pink, I started to think about the nature of the approaches (past, present and potentially future) adopted to catalyse changes in behaviour that will result in reduced resource and utility demand. At the moment I have yet to extend my thinking to consider the onward implications for the role ICT in reducing demand, but obviously it will go the to do list!

In Drive, Pink proposes three models of motivation in the context of the workplace and why people perform tasks when at work (he refers to these models as the operating systems of society). I crudely paraphrase and present below these models, and follow with what I see as the comparable three models for behaviour change (in the context of seeking to reduce demand).

• Motivation 1.0 (to approx. 1900 ) - people work to meet their basic needs (i.e. growing vegetables or tending to animals to provide food).
• Motivation 2.0 (from approx 1900 onwards, c.f. scientific management - Taylor etc.) - people work with a degree of efficiency that relates to the external rewards available for good performance and punishments pending for poor performance (i.e people work in response to carrots and sticks). This approach tends to works for tasks that are rule-based and routine, but for complicated and conceptual tasks this approach tends to crush creativity.
• Motivation 3.0 (may be the future - not frequently applied currently) - Where tasks are more complicated and conceptual, the motivation to pursue the task comes from the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself (e.g. the joy of solving a crossword for its own sake). Such intrinsic motivation is reliant on the individual pursuing a task having sufficient opportunity to develop a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

So in terms of approaches to motivating behaviour change, that results in reduced demand for resources and utilities, I suggest that considering the following three models (or operating systems if you prefer) and their implications for the role of ICT could be of value.

• Behaviour Change 1.0 (pretty much to date in developed countries??) - not so much behaviour change as unconstrained demand to enable improved well-being for society (unless the suply system breaks down, then substitute resources as appropriate).
• Behaviour Change 2.0 (the policy and research vision??) - automating demand creating processes where possible, and adding economic carrots and sticks to motivate individuals to reduce demand (e.g. dynamic pricing tariffs within a smart electricity grid).
• Behaviour Change 3.0 (a possible policy and research vision) - based around making managing personal demand an activity that is performed for the inherent satisfaction it provides. Reconfiguring one's lifestyle to reduce demand for resources and utilities, whilst improving one's quality of life, is certainly an activity that is both complicated and conceptual in nature (and so potential offers the opportunity to develop a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose).

Having rather speculatively proposed these three models (operating systems) for behaviour change, a couple of questions immediately come to mind.

• Do these model make sense? If so, under what conditions?
• Is the behaviour change 3.0 unrealistic? i.e. is it a social utopia vision (contrast with behaviour change 2.0 which could be viewed as a technological utopia vision)?