Can tech save the world? How can urban gardening and water conservation help in that world saving mission? The second annual CleanTech Symposium was hosted at UGA’s Delta Innovation Hub on Wednesday, April 19, in an effort to answer these pressing questions.
UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Office of Sustainability partnered with the Consulate of the Swiss General and the Swiss Business Hub in the USA – both located in Atlanta – for the second year to present this event on how Georgia’s entrepreneur’s and Swiss technology can partner for positive change through advancement in technology.
At this year’s CleanTech, conversations were around controlled environment agriculture (CEA), urban agriculture, and sustainable water conservation. The Lamm Lab is also focused on tackling the social science element of new technologies and conservation, and two students from the lab had the opportunity to present their research during the student poster competition.
Kristin Gibson and Allison Byrd each presented a poster aligned with CleanTech themes at an evening reception held following the day’s networking and knowledge-sharing events.
Gibson presented her poster titled Managing sustainable residential water consumption in the southeastern United States: Do rewards or punishment influence conservation. Gibson’s poster used data collected in a fall 2022 non-probability, opt-in survey of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama residents. Gibson examined the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on consumers’ water conservation behaviors through an extended theory of planned behavior model, finding extrinsic and intrinsic motivation both had negative effects on consumers’ water conservation behaviors. Gibson’s coauthors were Allison Byrd, Alexa Lamm, Kevan Lamm, and Jessica Holt.
Byrd used data collected in the same fall 2022 survey, employing an audience segmentation lens to determine if differences in environmental consumption values existed based on respondents’ state of residence and sex. Using the GREEN scale to measure their values related to purchasing items related to environmental consumption. Byrd’s findings from a robust two-way ANOVA revealed no significant difference in male and female respondents’ level of environmental consumption values. However, there were significant differences between each state. Florida residents had the highest GREEN score, followed by Georgia, then Alabama. Byrd’s coauthors were Kristin Gibson, Alexa Lamm, and Jessica Holt.
Gibson and Byrd were grateful for the opportunity to participate in this event for the second year in a row and enjoyed sharing their research not only with entrepreneurs throughout Georgia but with global innovators.
