A Longitudinal Study of Informational Interventions to Save Energy in an Office Building

Investigated whether informational interventions, applied periodically might affect proenvironmental behavior change and long term maintenance of change of office occupants. The interventions targeted 2 heating-related behaviors that were tied to observable attributes of each individual office. Informational interventions were employed to promote 2 behaviors relevant for efficient heating of individual offices in a large office building. In 2 successive winter seasons, interventions were applied during 4-wk periods. Short-term effects were assessed weekly, and long-term effects were assessed 1 yr after each of the 2 intervention periods. Improvements were observed in each intervention period, with partial behavior maintenance 1 yr later. It is concluded that the changes observed in the individual offices across conditions are suggestive of the program's capacity to correct relapses in earlier proenvironmental behavior.