Residential Energy Rebound Effect Assessment By Using Serious Games

The rebound effect in the household electricity consumption is a phenomenon that has been widely analyzed by the scientific community due to the fact that reduces the expected energy savings after energy efficiency has been improved,jeopardizing the effectiveness of such policies.In spite of the fact that the scientific community agrees that the rebound effect is true and can be measured,previous studies that have analyzed the effect present some methodological issues that have compromised the quality and usefulness of those studies.This thesis research’s objective was to propose and test a new methodology to assess the rebound effect in way that some of the previous methodological issues are reduced and/or controlled.The methodology that seems to fit and solve those methodological issues is serious game.Therefore,this research performed a new and original rebound effect assessment using serious games,in a way to prove or deny that serious games can be used as an effective tool to assess the rebound effect.This research concluded that when the effect is assessed using serious games,the rebound effect can,indeed,be adequately detected and measured.In addition,it was also proven that some of the methodological issues of previous studies can be corrected by using serious games to assess the rebound effect.However,this research lacks of a methodology or framework to state that the results from the game environment can be applied in a real life situation.As a result,new research ideas can be directed on finding a methodology or criteria on how to analyze if the results from the game itself can be used to design or improve policies.