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How Can Online Tools Help One Learn About and Improve Consumer Behaviour: Exemplarily, Laundry and Dishwashing Treatments?

Abstract The private household sector utilises a large contribution of the global energy and water resources. Household appliances have been developed to be increasingly efficient and resource saving. The efficiency of the appliance itself and consumer behaviour have an influence on the real-life usage of resources. A calculation module was created to help the consumer understand which part of their behaviour related to what amount of energy and water resources and associated costs are produced. With this module, the complete laundry and dishwashing processes could be covered and a personalised feedback on the use of water and energy and the associated costs could be generated. This module of a resource calculator has been available online on the website of Forum Waschen, a German multi-stakeholder association, since 2013. Input data from the users were stored anonymously with the consent of the user and analysed offline to learn about the actual consumer behaviour. A total of 2 049 useable datasets could be evaluated covering the years 2013 to 2016. They show that consumer behaviour is an important factor leading to the economizing of resources following the optimisation of the efficiency of household appliances. In some cases, households started to reduce the consumption and act resource saving. Some households now wash less, at lower temperatures, dry about 50 % of the laundry outside in the summer and iron less. They use mostly the energy-saving programme for automatic dishwashing and wash only necessary things in a sink filled with warm water. In other cases, households are careless and do not think about their behaviour. They wash their laundry and dishes more often than necessary in half-loaded machines and use resource-consuming programmes at high temperatures. Moreover, they dry the laundry in heated rooms and iron all or most of their laundry. Additionally, they practice inefficient handwashing of dishes under hot running tap-water. Careless households can start to act sustainably when undertaking household activities to reduce their consumption and save resources and costs by paying more attention to the environmental impact and responsibility and changing their behaviour. Utilising the resource calculator, the user can simply see the consequences of a changed behaviour in terms of energy or water saved or lower associated costs. The consumer may be triggered to change their behaviour towards a more sustainable use of the resources with this kind of nudging providing personalised information.