The Business Council on Climate Change presented a program last week on how games are inspiring ways to get people on board with sustainable behavior change. The presenters, from Blue Shield, Sabre Holdings, SunPower and RideSpring, all had great stories to tell about how their interactive contests are inspiring people to increase their environmental efforts, get healthier, carpool more, or boost their store of knowledge about solar power.

Goals for these programs vary: improve employee and customer health (Blue Shield), boost employees’ sustainability behavior and knowledge (Sabre), increase market awareness and sales (SunPower), and expand knowledge and use of alternative transit and ridesharing among commuters (RideShare). (More info and links to programs are at the BC3 site.)

The experiences of all four reinforce what research has been telling us all along about getting people to act more responsibly in all kinds of arenas.

Make it relevant. Sabre’s Leilani Latimer noted that employees didn’t care about environmental actions at home—they wanted to know what they could do at work. Blue Shield’s Bryce Williams had similar experiences with his program.

Don’t chastise. Admonishing people for bad behavior or not fulfilling a goal almost never gets results, at least in the long term.

Go team. Competition gets intense in the Sabre and Blue Shield programs, in which participant teams compete by performing environmentally friendly or healthy behaviors. The actions are recorded and tracked online.

Peer pressure works, even if you’re not in high school. Team members pulled their own weight, and everyone reported that knowing what everyone else was doing meant people weren’t likely to cheat. Several people noted that fame—for instance, seeing your name in a company e-mail announcing winners—is a motivator.

Prizes work (if they’re coveted). Paul McGrath of RideSpring swore by regular prizes (his programs provide them via random drawings), as long as they’re good ones.

Prizes don’t work (if they’re eh). Sabre’s program offers prizes to workgroups, but they’re so small that they’re not the main motivator, said Latimer.

Make it easy. No one will do anything if it’s too complicated, time consuming or difficult. All these programs feature easy online access and simple steps.

Why don’t energy efficiency technologies and strategies get people as excited as a Tesla roadster? On the face of it, duh. It’s the brains of it that make it a head-scratcher.

As the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy reported last year, economic data and the historical record suggest that “energy efficiency investments can provide up to one-half of the needed greenhouse gas emissions reductions most scientists say are needed between now and the year 2050″ and “investments in more energy-productive technologies can also lead to a substantial net energy bill savings for the consumer and for the nation’s businesses.” In other words, energy efficiency is probably the single most effective greenhouse gas reduction strategy we have, and it saves you money. What’s not to get excited about? Are people that distracted by bright shiny objects?

Yes, we are. Advocates have been lamenting the unsexiness of energy efficiency for some time: it’s the granny panties of the green economy. Many see the solution in language—what we need is a new term, one less evocative of slide rules and more inspirational. I’m all for motivating, send-the-right-message language—that would typically be my go-to solution. But I think what we need here is something more physical.

Energy efficiency faces two obstacles that strike me as more serious than its nerdy name: invisibility and implausibility. The beauty and the downfall of many energy efficiency measures is that they work in the background, without anyone being aware that they’re happening. And the potential savings from these measures often inspire skepticism more than any other reaction—remember how President Obama’s campaign opponents mocked him for suggesting proper tire inflation as a way to save gas?

People think that if a solution like that really were effective, it would already be standard practice—someone would have told us about it already. That assumption ignores the powerful forces of inertia and the culture of heedless consumption (most Americans haven’t worried much about saving energy because we haven’t had to—even the simplest strategies are easily missed if you’re not looking for them), but it’s powerful nonetheless.

I suspect that we need to make energy consumption a thing: people need to be able to see it happening. It has to come out of the background and be made concrete through web interfaces, dials, beeps, texts from your tires, whatever. That might compromise design simplicity (another efficiency value), or even slightly reduce energy savings, but what’s more effective—a theoretically perfect solution that few use, or something a bit too tricked out that gains mass acceptance?

It may pay to remember that out of sight often means out of mind.

A recent piece in the New York Times reveals that living green is driving couples into therapy when one half of the couple is greener than the other. One partner might sneak unsustainably produced meals, set the thermostat too high or drive too much—chiding and guilt ensue. If it goes on long enough, the happy couple is no longer happy. Even families are tense as greener children clash with their not-so-green parents.

This seems a bit ridiculous (for a number of reasons), but it got me thinking about what does work when trying to convince someone (or some company) to change their unsustainable ways. This is the topic of an annual conference called Behavior, Energy and Climate Change; among its lessons:

• Information alone doesn’t work. People usually need some other motivation. Money saved is good; money earned is better.
• The payoff (or bad result from inaction) needs to be relatively immediate. The threat that your town may be under water when the glaciers melt or knowing that you’ll break even on that solar system in a mere 15 years doesn’t get many to change.
• Competition helps. If you know what your neighbor is doing, you want to do better.
• Tracking progress also motivates, especially if you can see how much money you’re saving.

It’s hard to change behavior, and harder still to communicate in ways that make a difference. When I consider these campaigns, the successful ones have this in common: they lead by example. A company credibly demonstrates that they are walking the talk, and others follow or do business with them. Or a campaign fosters friendly competition, so participants naturally follow one another.

Meanwhile, my former housemate will be pleased to know that I’ve drastically shortened my shower times….