Climate change creates an urgent context for addressing the energy waste in existing buildings. Malini Srivastava completed her PhD dissertation at Carnegie Mellon, which contends that serious games have the potential to address the energy-efficiency gap — the failure of owners and occupants to adopt energy-efficiency measures in spite of their cost benefits. Her thesis incorporates the design, implementation, data collection, and analysis of innovative serious pervasive energy games for homeowners and schools. The thesis was undertaken with the eFargo team from North Dakota State University (NDSU), the City of Fargo, and the Fargo Utilities to participate in the Georgetown University Energy Prize, a nationwide competition for cities to reduce energy use. Based on data collected from 2015-2018, her dissertation revealed that playing serious pervasive energy games (a) leads to significant awareness and learning about energy waste and energy savings; (b) engenders a willingness to engage in energy-saving behavior in certain conditions; (c) engenders a willingness to make energy-saving investments; and (d) achieves energy savings. The icing on the cake: Fargo won the Georgetown Prize.

​

You can view Malini's full dissertation by clicking on this link here.