Abstract for: Understanding the potential climate and systemic impacts of the dynamics of digital adoption and use in daily life in the UK

Digitalisation of technologies and everyday practices has transformed the way we consume energy and resources. However, digitalisation’s future energy and material impacts remain uncertain and tied to its indirect effects. Digitalisation could aid climate mitigation efforts through efficiency improvements, substitution, and dematerialisation, thereby easing pressure on energy and resources. Conversely, it could indirectly intensify consumption through induced demand and rebound effects. Digitalisation’s ultimate climate impacts depend largely upon its deployment and use, and hence, on behaviour. Therefore, central to understanding the full impact of digitalisation is understanding behaviours around the use of digital applications (technologies and services) in daily life. This work-in-progress paper discusses the first phase of a study in which participatory systems mapping with digital users to explore how systemic preconditions such as social norms, trust, risk perception, and privacy concerns shape and are shaped by digital behaviours will form the basis for a system dynamics model exploring the potential energy and material impacts of digitalisation in daily life.