Promoting pro-environmental behaviour: a tale of two systems

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in our everyday lives. We no longer see it as solely the responsibility of governments or large corporations, but we are asking ourselves how we as individuals can contribute to the well-being and maintenance of the world we live in. This paper explores the use of mobile persuasive technology to promote pro-environmental behaviour in the home. We have designed, implemented, deployed and evaluated two mobile systems in two different domains, in two different countries. The novelty in this research is that the theoretical outcomes from two different but related studies are analysed together. From this we have discovered eight overarching persuaders to sustainable domestic resource consumption. The fact that these concepts are common to both studies strengthens the generalisability of our findings. The contribution of this paper to HCI is a set of eight key concepts to consider when designing mobile persuasive technology to promote pro-environmental behaviour.

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