Controlling the ‘elephant in the room’: A new protocol for sharing data from home performance monitoring systems

This study explores the use of smart home performance monitoring systems to deliver reliable and consistent building performance data. Accurate data is essential for the continuous improvement of building regulations and housing quality so that citizens can better cope with volatile energy prices, weather extremes and climate change. While previous research has studied and modelled the adoption factors of home technology systems, this study is the first to address the important question of ‘householder willingness to externally share the resulting data’. It proposes a new theoretical and practical approach to address perceived data-sharing risks, whilst ensuring that the system delivers individual, household, and social benefit. The first stage explored is the privacy paradox, to analyse the underlying contradictions on the importance people place on their privacy and their actual behaviour. Then, the findings from interviews and focus groups are presented, underpinned by detailed data from a nationwide survey of 972 responses. The significant finding is that attitudes and behaviours explained within the privacy paradox do not hold true within the context of the home. Notably, without control,householders were highly averse to sharing data that could transcend the virtual space to directly compromise their privacy and security in their home. Cummulatively, the new findings resulted in an integrated technical, social and policy implementation framework for moderating risk perceptions, thus improving participation and trust in performance monitoring schemes. A 3-level rule-based data approach is developed as a practical tool to analogously deliver technical data control, promote choice, and enable value-based home data transactions. These outputs contribute to a novel evidence-based net-zero pathway that links housing performance data with the standards, design, and delivery of homes.