An Analysis of the Trade-Off Between Sustainability and Quality of Experience for Video Streaming

The massive increase in Internet data traffic caused by video streaming applications has quickly raised energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). Thus, sustainable system solutions have started to be studied, which aim to lower energy consumption but, at the same time, may negatively impact the Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by the users of video streaming services. This paper aims to investigate the possibility of a trade-off between sustainability and the QoE. We have found that limiting the maximum QoE to an acceptable QoE is a possible solution to reduce energy consumption while still satisfying the consumer. Our finding is partly validated by the results of a survey we conducted to investigate the willingness of people to reduce the video streaming quality being aware that energy saving would be achieved. These results show that most consumers accept lower video quality (to a certain extent) if they have the possibility to consume less energy and save money.