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Energy use in the home is a topic of increasing interest and concern, and one on which technology can have a significant impact. However, existing work typically focuses on moderately affluent homeowners who have relative autonomy with respect to their home, or does not address socio-economic status, class, and other related issues. For the 30% of the U.S. population who rent their homes, many key decisions regarding energy use must be negotiated with a landlord. Because energy use impacts the bottom line of both landlords and tenants, this can be a source of conflict in the landlord/tenant relationship. Ubicomp technologies for reducing energy use in rental units must engage with landlord/tenant conflicts to be successful. Unfortunately, little detailed knowledge is available about the impact of landlord/tenant conflicts on energy use. We present an analysis of a series of qualitative studies with landlords and tenants. We argue that a consideration of multiple stakeholders, and the power imbalances among them, will drive important new research questions and lead to more widely applicable solutions. The main contribution of our work is a set of open research questions and design recommendations for technologies that may affect and be affected by the conflict between stakeholders around energy use.
Dillahunt et al. (Sun,) studied this question.