ClimateCrafting

A massive reduction in CO2 emissions is needed to reach the Paris climate goals on many societal levels-including individual consumer decisions. But how should people reduce CO2 if they do not even know how much CO2 different actions cause? In contrast to resources as time or money, it is challenging to monitor one's own impact on CO2 emissions. Designing digital assistants to provide users with information about their CO2 footprint could improve CO2 literacy (i.e. mental models), enabling individual behavioural change. We reviewed how characteristics of human bounded rationality (c.f. behavioural economics), such as temporal discounting, hamper effective interaction with CO2 as a resource. We examined user requirements for a carbon footprint tracker in an online study with 249 participants. As a result, we provide key design features for tracking apps that empower users to reduce their individual carbon emissions.