• Energy Research

There is an increased focus on research identifying design strategies to influence user behaviour towards more sustainable action, known as Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB). Recent literature in this field has introduced a number of design processes, and developed a model that emerged through consensus. However, not enough case studies are accompanied by those proposed strategies; therefore it is difficult to evaluate their effectiveness. This paper presents findings from a case study of inducing a sustainable behaviour – using human-power to drive an everyday Energy using Products (EuP). It presents the result of applying the strategy to an artefact and evaluation was carried through conducting a product-in-use study. The analysis provide an explanation of how each of the participants cope with the use of new artefact and account for different types of motivations that have affected on their behaviour determinants.

Design for Sustainability is not the panacea we hoped it would be when it was first introduced in the latter part of the 20th century. Today, the health of both our environment and our societies is at a critical state, a breaking point, with piecemeal solutions offered as social-media-friendly rallying points, such as the European Parliament approved ban on single-use plastics, whilst fundamental, and arguably less ‘exciting’, issues such as loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, and climate change are shuffled to the back. It can be argued, however, that the awareness of the concept of sustainability and the need to reduce the negative human impact upon the environment and society has grown significantly and, consequently, has moved up the global agenda; this is evidenced by the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. However, it is also clear that the role of Design for Sustainability within this agenda is not providing the solutions necessary to manifest the level of change required. Traditional approaches are not working. This Special Issue of Sustainability seeks to readdress this with eight papers that push the frontier of what Design for Sustainability could be—and possibly must be—across the broad spectrum of design disciplines.

Food waste is emerging as a global issue and has been recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals with a specific target to halve per capita global food waste at consumer levels and reduce food losses by 2030. Research on food waste has been neglected particularly in the aviation sector. The International Air Transport Association reported that 5.7 million tonnes of cabin waste was generated on airlines, up to 80.5% of which was leftover food and beverages. The exploration of passengers’ food wasting aims to provide insights for tackling the airline food waste problem. To address this issue, this research investigated the in-flight catering experience of 19 passengers from 21 full-service flights. Qualitative research techniques have been applied to analyse passengers’ food-wasting behaviour by collecting participant-produced photographs and completed questionnaires concerning food-related behaviour. This research identified key factors associated with passengers’ food wasting behaviour by adopting Design for Sustainable Behaviour approaches. Four types of factors were found to influence onboard passenger waste, these were normative, habitual, intentional and situational factors. This research indicates that behavioural change interventions need to incorporate the power of social norms to prevent food waste.

This paper presents an approach to identify opportunities to develop sustainable Product Service Systems (PSS) involving Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of the research is to build understanding of how the integration of product and service design and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can contribute to identify opportunities to develop sustainable PSS involving SMEs. In order to develop the approach, research with 16 Colombian Manufacturing SMEs was carried out. A reference model and four generic types of PSS according to the relationships between product and service design and ICT are used to analyse the data. Finally, the possibility of extending the approach into a general framework to work with other industries is discussed.

Abstract This paper reviews the trends in society, technology and energy demand of the past 30 years, together with the growth of the ‘on-demand’ culture. The ‘24/7’ or ‘always on’ society can be defined as one where people demand—and generally receive—what they want ‘now’. It has grown up in parallel with developments in information technology, which have produced the services needed to meet that demand. Larger numbers of appliances, resulting from greater affluence and disposable income, have increased energy use, despite energy efficiencies in other areas. While monetary factors suggest that changes brought about by the 24/7 society will generally be self-correcting at the macro-economic level, there will nevertheless be effects for individuals, such as potentially severe impacts on the fuel poor as electricity prices rise. We conclude with a view of future directions. As the 24/7 culture continues to grow, there is scope for designers and for information technology to manage and reduce energy consumption. This includes buildings, their services systems, and the mix of new technologies that will be deployed over the next 20 years or so, including the possibilities for data exchange and control at the interface between energy suppliers and consumers, coupled with greater understanding of the behaviour of the consumers themselves.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) in schools requires a whole-school approach to ensure that all stakeholders, including students, value sustainability and express this value in an active engagement in the ongoing development process. Such inclusivity however is rarely achieved, with benefits of ESD in schools usually recognised only by a select few. School strategies that continue to dominate research focus on management of the finite resources or give emphasis to a particular pedagogical agenda, whereas approaches that emphasise whole-school ESD engagement are scarce. This paper aims to address this gap. To do so, we propose to frame schools as service organisations and use service logic approach and service innovation theory to review how five primary schools in England define and implement ESD. The findings from our comparative case study discuss three strategies that schools as service organisations need to consider: defining sustainable student experience as a core service concept, developing an organisational culture of sustainability-driven innovation, and engaging in a value co-creation process with external stakeholders in order to facilitate the concept. Our results suggest that by placing “sustainable student experience” as the core service concept, schools can align their external and internal organisational activities to enable sustainable education for all stakeholders.

Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB) is a maturing research area concerned with the application of design strategies to influence consumer behaviour during a products use phase towards more sustainable action. However, current DfSB research has focussed on strategy selection with little research into understanding the real-world impact of the behaviour changing interventions debated. This article presents the results of an extensive literature review of one specific DfSB strategy, feedback – a user agentive performance indicator. These findings exemplify the considerations and limitations of this particular approach to behaviour change, drawing on empirical research conducted by a breadth of authors, including two of the only medium-term case studies in the field of DfSB. Considerations discussed include the frequency, duration and accuracy of feedback; the selection of metrics and the presentation medium and mode; the use of ambience and the location of the installation. Limitations of feedback includ...