Ambivalences Experimental Devices on the Appropriation and Diffusion of Eco-Innovations in the Field of Energy

In the area of managing electricity demand, eco-innovations in the residential sector oriented dynamic pricing, piloting or uses information devices (Darby, 2006; Faruqui, 2010) borrow heavily to the experimental method. They seek primarily to measure in real and controlled situation with a set of household effects and their maintenance over time, of such devices on the load curve. The robustness of the results is related to the representativeness of panels and control groups (Fisher, 2008). Nevertheless, since the surveys (1927-1939) conducted at the Western Company, we measure the participants' commitment is partly shaped by the monitoring and observation devices produced by the experimental setting (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). A structural tension therefore passes through the conduct of experiments looking at the same time to neutralize the effect of "hawthorne" and forms of reflexivity induced by the experimental method to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed devices (Teil, Muniesa, 2006) and rely on the own stylistic devices in experimental mode that encourage participants to be stakeholders of results (Lanham, 2006) to accompany incentives "behavior change".
We intend, through a qualitative survey conducted among experimentalists working households (30 households) in the residential sector and holders of the "Smart Electric Lyon" (15 participants), to see how this tension and uncertainty it generates shape the ownership of various devices experienced.
It appears that the experimental device is a true "trajectory" that binds the events that punctuate the course of any work organization deployed to follow the (Strauss, 1985, trans. Fr. 1991). Here, the key steps of the experimental process going through the devices and professional or collectives involved in porting their help shape the direction and manner of appropriation experienced devices. These focus moments wondering, in terms of participants, the devices, whose use eventually stabilizes in practical and specific logical losing the original incentive dynamics.