Is Altruism Overrated? Effects of Information Transparency and Social Value Orientation on Smart Grid Balancing
Real-time balancing of load demand and supply in smart energy grids is a major concern to electricity generators and distributors, as well as governmental institutions. Given the nature of energy as a public good, we posited that smart grid coordination shares gamification principles with repeated balancing games, and is sensitive to individual differences in social value orientation – i.e., the extent to which someone is competitive vs. altruistic. We thus developed an online game to test the prediction thatinformation transparency (awareness of consequences of individual actions on the whole population) would increase a player’s clicking behavior and overall smart grid balancing as a function of social value orientation. Results showed that especially people with competitive social value orientation adequately balanced their smart grid – a finding consistent with game-theoretical notions on the benefits of rational decision making in the context of public goods
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