Get rid of the eco-button! Design interventions to steer sustainable use of washing machines

To reduce energy consumption of households, many appliances contain eco-settings, which when used, reduce energy consumption. However, the effectivity of the eco-settings in reducing energy consumption is hardly tested. Other design for sustainable behaviour strategies like coercion and feedback might be more effective. To test the...

Supporting food design with consumer research: from inspiration and validation to participation and integration

To increase practical relevance, scientific research on food design is slowly shifting toward studying real-life food situations, letting go of experimental control to allow creative freedom, and studying design considerations during the creative process. On the other hand, some chefs and food designers have started to develop collaborative...

Consumer buying behaviour of sustainable vacuum cleaners: Consequences for design and marketing

Although most people claim to prefer a more sustainable product, only a limited number of ‘green buyers’ act on their words at the moment of purchase. To find out how to get mainstream buyers to buy more sustainable products, we used data on 950 Western European buyers of 32 different vacuum cleaner models. The issue was why three out of four...

Estimating the costs of consumer-facing cybercrime: A tailored instrument and representative data for six EU countries

While cybercrime has existed for many years and is still reported to be a growing problem, reliable estimates of the economic impacts are rare. We develop a survey instrument tailored to measure the costs of consumer-facing cybercrime systematically, by aggregating different cost factors into direct losses and expenses for protection measures....