The University of Dayton (UD) owns over 350 houses. The quality of the housing stock is highly variable. The university charges a uniform housing fee to each student, which includes all utility costs. As a result, students have no incentive to reduce energy use. This is a common scenario; 12.8% of all U.S. households have all or some of their energy costs included in their rent. To address this situation, the student-run Sustainability Club instituted two energy contests to reward households that used the least energy. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of the contests.

In designing a contest, a principal task was to determine how to quantify behavior-driven energy savings over diverse housing types with a transient occupant population. This paper describes how utility billing data were normalized for occupancy and weather affects to create utility allowances. Household energy use during the contest period was then compared to the utility allowances to determine savings and contest winners. Financial incentives were developed for contest winners.

During the implementation phase, contestants were provided with energy-conservation educational materials and internet-based feedback about how each house was performing. This paper describes the nature of the educational materials and the feedback, and discusses contestant response to these features.

During the evaluation phase, participating houses were compared to a control group of non-participating houses to determine the overall energy savings. Follow-up surveys describe specific actions by contest participants to reduce energy use, and what new habits participants formed.