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Skill rebound: On an unintended effect of digitalization

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Coroamă, Vlad C., Pargman, Daniel·2020·Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability
DOI 10.1145/3401335.3401362
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Abstract

Efficiency gains in economic processes often do not deliver the projected overall savings. Irrespective of whether the increase in efficiency saves energy, resources, time or transaction costs, there are various mechanisms that spur additional consumption as a consequence. These mechanisms are generically called rebound effects, and they are problematic from a sustainability perspective as they decrease or outweigh the environmental benefits of efficiency gains. Since one of the overarching purposes of digitalization is to increase efficiency, rebound effects are bound to occur frequently in its wake. Rebound effects of digitalization have been ignored until recently, but they have been increasingly studied lately. One particular mechanism of digital rebound, however, has been largely disregarded so far: the digitalization-induced lowered skill requirements needed to perform a specific activity. As with other types of rebound effects, this leads to an increase in the activity in question. In this paper, we propose the term skill rebound to denote this mechanism. We use the example of self-driving cars to show how digitalization can lower the skill bar for operating a vehicle, and how this opens 'driving' a car to entirely new socio-demographic categories such as elderly, children or even pets, leading to increased use of the (transportation) service in question and thus to rebound effects. We finally argue that these unintended environmental effects of skill rebound must be better understood and taken into account in the design of new digital technologies.

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  • Given that AI pervades many different areas of society and economic sectors, it is more difficult to enumerate all of the possible indirect impacts and rebound effects that it can have.

    “Given that AI pervades many different areas of society and economic sectors, it is more difficult to enumerate all of the possible indirect impacts and rebound effects that it can have, which would involve considering the different interactions at play within every sector and between them [23, 53].”

    From From Efficiency Gains to Rebound Effects: The Problem of Jevons' Paradox in AI's Polarized Environmental Debate (2025) · cites this paper as [23]

    Section 2 describes numerous indirect rebound effects of digitalization and calls their mechanisms subtle and elusive; the Conclusion also emphasizes indirect consequences. The paper does not establish that AI pervades many sectors or that interactions within and between sectors make all its possible impacts difficult to enumerate. Its discussion of AI is limited to an example of a calculation-heavy area. (LLM, conf=0.82)

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Cited by

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Authors
Coroamă, V. C., & Pargman, D.
Affiliations
  • ETH Zurich (CH)
  • KTH Royal Institute of Technology (SE)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability
Publisher
ACM
Published
2020-06-21
Pages
213-219
DOI
10.1145/3401335.3401362
OpenAlex
W3046449701
Cited by
17
References
5
Citations by year
2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 1
FWCI
3.35
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Transportation and Mobility Innovations
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure
Keywords
rebound effect, digitalization, efficiency improvement, autonomous vehicles, skill requirements, environmental sustainability, technology design, transportation use, older drivers

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