  As Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are increasingly being deployed,
situations frequently arise where multiple stakeholders must reconcile
preferences to control a shared resource. We perform a 5-month long experiment
dubbed 'smartSDH' (carried out in 27 employees' office space) where users
report their preferences for the brightness of overhead lighting. smartSDH
implements a modified Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism; assuming users are
rational, it incentivizes truthful reporting, implements the socially desirable
outcome, and compensates participants to ensure higher payoffs under smartSDH
when compared with the default outside option(i.e., the option chosen in the
absence of such a mechanism). smartSDH assesses the feasibility of the VCG
mechanism in the context of smart building control and evaluated smartSDH's
effect using metrics such as light level satisfaction, incentive satisfaction,
and energy consumption. Although previous studies on the theoretical aspects of
the mechanism indicate user satisfaction, our experiments indicate quite the
contrary. We found that the participants were significantly less satisfied with
light brightness and incentives determined by the VCG mechanism over time.
These data suggest the need for more realistic behavioral models to design IoT
technologies and highlights difficulties in estimating preferences from
observable external factors such as atmospheric conditions.
