The challenge of promoting behavioral changes in users that leads to energy savings in public buildings has become a complex task requiring the involvement of multiple technologies. Wireless sensor networks have a great potential for the development of tools, such as serious games, that encourage acquiring good energy and healthy habits among users in the workplace. This paper presents the deve...

We present BinCam, a personal informatics system to monitor individuals’ food waste and recycling behavior. As such, it uses an augmented kitchen bin to automatically capture and log an individual’s waste management activity. Each time the bin is used, a mobile phone installed in the inside of the lid captures an image of the contents and uploads it to a Facebook application. The application of...

The policy recommendations ofmost economists are based on the rational actormodel. The emphasis is on achieving efficient allocation by insuring that property rights are completely assigned and that market failures are corrected. This paper takes the position that so-called behavioral “anomalies” are central to human decision-making and, therefore, should be the starting point for effective eco...

We test the effectiveness of an entertainment education TV series, MTV Shuga, aimed at providing information and changing attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Using a simple model we show that “edutainment”can work through an “information”or through a “conformity”channel. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in urban Nigeria where young viewers were exposed to Shuga or to a non-ed...

The policy recommendations of most economists are based on the rational actor model. The emphasis is on achieving efficient allocation by insuring that property rights are completely assigned and that market failures are corrected. This paper takes the position that so-called behavioral “anomalies” are central to human decision making and therefore, should be the starting point for effective ec...

We are facing rapid changes in the global climate, and these changes are attributable to human behavior. Humans produce this global impact through our use of natural resources, multiplied by the vast increase in population seen in the past 50 to 100 years. Our goal in this article is to examine the underlying psychosocial causes of human impact, primarily through patterns of reproduction and co...

The traditional approach to evolutionary psychology relies entirely on natural selection as the cause of the evolution of adaptations. Exclusive reliance on natural selection overlooks the fact that changes in development are a necessary prerequisite for evolutionary change. These developmental changes provide the material for natural selection to work on. In the neo-Darwinian scenario, the mec...

This paper discusses the introduction of personalized explorable visual narratives into the Technology Enhanced Learning domain, which were used by 233 students as part of their undergraduate degree program during two successive academic years. The research proposes evaluating the usage of visual narratives to indicate positive behavioral change in student engagement levels. It highlights the i...