Unplug Now

Unplug Now twitter.com/unplugnow Stanford University CS377P Daisuke Iizawa Keng-Teh Min Enrique Allen Greg Schwartz

1 simple action

Unplug any unused appliance near you today

Why?
According to PG&E, if everyone in the United States unplugs his or her unused electronic appliances, it's like taking 8.5 million cars off the road
Wow… we can save energy and prevent unnecessary global warming with one simple action

Antecedents to Peace
People working together
Interconnectedness
Energy sustainability

Process
Facebook week-long event
Twitter account
100 HITs on Amazon Mechanical Turk paying users $0.2/per uploaded picture of unplugged appliance to Facebook event

Tweet “@unplugnow [appliance]” Update Facebook status “ unplugnow [appliance]” OR Step 1 Step 2 *HITs upload picture of unplugged appliance

Metrics for ATPs
How many people join Facebook event
How many people follow Twitter account
How many people actually unplug something- based on public tweets and Facebook status message updates
Estimated carbon emissions avoided

Results
“ Attended” Facebook event: 35 (12.9%)
Twitter followers: 4
HITs completed: 2
Unplugged appliances: 22
Estimated carbon emission avoided in 1 day: ~2 kg
Hypothetical carbon emissions avoided yearly:
~ 726 kg if constant participation rate
*According to E-Day, unplugged phone charger when not in use = annual saving of 10 pounds and 33 kilograms of carbon emissions off of your annual CO2 total

What worked?
Exchanging comments on Facebook invite wall
Sending mobile photos with twitpic.com

Limitations
Did not scale beyond personal ties
No feedback loop after status update
No tweets despite rsvp to attend Facebook event
No spontaneous followers on twitter
HIT required Facebook account
No scalable analysis of Facebook status

Lessons Learned
Must use cue to trigger behavior change- eg SMS reminder to unplug
Facebook group has more potential for continued engagement
Must engage lead Twitter users and actively follow other users
Make HIT simpler
Provide feedback/progress for participants- X amount of carbon emissions avoided today

Unplug Now twitter.com/unplugnow Stanford University CS377P Daisuke Iizawa Keng-Teh Min Enrique Allen Greg Schwartz

Unplug Now

by Enrique Allen

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