I did it once, but can I do it again? The role of responsibility attribution and self-efficacy in technology for sustainable behavior change

Technology increasingly helps change human behavior towards socially aspired goals such as sustainability. From a long-term perspective, an interesting question is which design factors affect not only momentary user behavior but also attitude and future pro-environmental behavioral intentions. As one possible influencing factor, we manipulated technology agency (N=175) of a smart heating system, supporting users in saving energy. In the high agency condition, the system independently adjusted temperature settings. In the low agency condition, the system made adjustment suggestions to the user. Results showed a negative effect of technology agency on user responsibility attribution and a positive correlation between user responsibility attribution and pro-environmental behavioral intentions. Exploratory findings implied that designing technology with low (vs. high) agency can lead to users feeling more responsible for their behavioral outcome in interaction with technology (here: saving energy), which in turn can foster their intention to behave accordingly (i.e., sustainably) in the future.