Rebound Effects in Sustainable HCI

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI 2011, May 7–12, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada. ACM 978-1-4503-0268-5/11/05. Abstract Much sustainable HCI design research hopes to achieve net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions via persuasive or more efficient technologies. This research has shown promising results. However, the proxies generally used in evaluation (e.g. less energy or water consumption) may be poor indicators of such systems’ effect on emissions because of effects outside the scope of analysis; in particular, direct and indirect rebound effects as described in the economic literature. We suggest sustainable HCI might mitigate these problems by requiring designs to affect market options asymmetrically.