An awareness based approach to sustainability: Agent-Based Modeling for decision making in energy policies

The paper discusses the impact of social interaction on individual and collective behaviors and its effect on the consumption of energy. The underlying hypothesis is that ICT tools enable societal and psychological mechanisms leading to sustainable lifestyles. We envision tools supporting social norms, i.e. rules governing an individual’s behavior by social sanctions that encourage sustainable behavior on the part of user and consumers. We present SAM4SN (Spread of Awareness Model for Social Norms), an Agent-Based Model (ABM) to explore the role of awareness in the consumption of a resource. Agents represent households that use a resource – e.g. energy or water – whose consumption has to be reduced. Agents influence each other and such influence improves their awareness that, in turn, influences resource consumption. Social influence and the role of smart metering functions as awareness's catalyst are described. SAM4SN is an exploratory model to play and explore different situations, leading or not to a sustainable consumption of energy. In particular, the sustainability tipping point and its role in decision-making will be introduced.