This thesis reports on a complete research cycle from initial concept development through implementation evaluation. The thesis begins with literature reviews of related, existing research. Next, I discuss my initial field research — semi-structured interviews testing the preliminary program concepts with consumers. The initial interviews were used to select among alternative information displays, narrowing down the uncertainties to a small set of well-defined questions. As a third step, I present a detailed analysis of a large-scale survey based upon questions remaining after the qualitative, semi-structured interviews. Finally, I evaluated the first test case of an actual program implementation. My primary findings were that customers value comparative information about their home's energy use; that easy to understand graphical representations of comparative energy use can be created; but that further research is need to determine the extent to which comparative energy information promotes improvements in residential energy efficiency.

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103 pp., 1999, $20.00, A993