EZ Phone: Persuading Mobile Users to Conserve Energy

Mobile persuasion is using a mobile device to motivate people to change their behavior in a positive way. Thus there is the potential in investigating how mobile technology could motivate people to change their behavior towards energy use in a home setting. In this paper we report a pilot study that was conducted to determine which of three visualization media (text, audio, multimedia) on a mobile device (EZ Phone: Energy Zaving Phone) can be the most effective in persuading users to conserve energy in a home setting. The design of the device was presented in the form of a video prototype. The study was carried out as a between subjects design with the type of medium the independent variable and persuasion was measured in the form of subjective perception. Our results show that text (SMS) is perceived to be the most persuading and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) the least persuading. We also present our thoughts on the implications to design and future development of our ongoing research on mobile persuasion.