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Motivating environmentally sustainable behavior changes with a virtual polar bear

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Tawanna Dillahunt at University of Michigan
Tawanna Dillahunt
Geof Becker
Geof Becker
Geof Becker
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Jennifer Mankoff at University of Washington
Jennifer Mankoff
Robert E. Kraut at Carnegie Mellon University
Robert E. Kraut
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Abstract

Personal choices and activities directly account for much of the energy consumption in the U.S. with secondary impacts of those activities influencing an even larger proportion of energy consumption. Although there is a long history of investigation into motivators for energy-conservation, it is still unclear how to encourage persistent behavior change, and technology has only recently been applied to the problem. In this study we sought to learn if virtual pets could have a positive impact on real-world, environmentally responsible behavior. The polar bear is a powerful iconic symbol for many individuals, and its fate can be simply and directly connected to environmentally responsible behavior. Just as Tamagotchis evoked a powerful response from their owners, we hoped to use attachment to a virtual polar bear as a motivator for energy conservation. We ran a study exploring the impact of attachment on real-world actions. The results of our study suggest that an interactive virtual polar bear may increase environmentally responsible behaviors, especially when emotional attachment takes place.
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Motivating Environmentally Sustainable Behavior Changes
with a Virtual Polar Bear
Tawanna Dillahunt, Geof Becker, Jennifer Mankoff and Robert Kraut
HCII, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
{tdillahu, gbecker, jmankoff, robert.kraut}@andrew.cmu.edu
Abstract
Personal choices and activities directly account for much of the energy consumption in the U.S.
with secondary impacts of those activities influencing an even larger proportion of energy
consumption. Although there is a long history of investigation into motivators for energy-
conservation, it is still unclear how to encourage persistent behavior change, and technology has
only recently been applied to the problem. In this study we sought to learn if virtual pets could
have a positive impact on real-world, environmentally responsible behavior. The polar bear is a
powerful iconic symbol for many individuals, and its fate can be simply and directly connected to
environmentally responsible behavior. Just as Tamagotchis evoked a powerful response from
their owners, we hoped to use attachment to a virtual polar bear as a motivator for energy
conservation. We ran a study exploring the impact of attachment on real-world actions. The
results of our study suggest that an interactive virtual polar bear may increase environmentally
responsible behaviors, especially when emotional attachment takes place.
1. Introduction
Global warming continues to be one of the world’s major issues. In the U.S. alone, Americans
consumed 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy in 2005 [11], with personal, individual activities
accounting for much of this consumption. For example, 40% of the energy consumed is used for
residential or commercial lighting, heating and cooling. All of this is driven directly by
individual choices or indirectly because of consumer needs. Thus, personal choices can lead to a
significant reduction in energy consumption, with a corresponding reduction in the release of
CO2, one of the primary gases responsible for climate change. However, this requires persuading
individuals to change their behavior, and maintain those changes over time, both difficult
propositions. Our approach is to leverage the power of the polar bear as a symbol of climate
change by creating a virtual pet, a technology that has promise for supporting behavior change
(e.g. [7]). We describe a pilot study showing that increased attachment to a virtual polar bear had
a significant positive impact on the number of actions that individuals had taken as reported a
week after they used our software. This work is currently being incorporated into a mobile tool
intended to influence transportation choices and into a social networking website.
There is extensive literature in the areas of environmental sociology, public policy, and more
recently, conservation psychology that discusses the promotion of environmentally responsible
behavior. In past work, we have explored the impact of motivators such as public commitment,
Figure 1: (top) a polar
bear with lots of ice
(bottom) a polar bear
with little ice
frequent feedback, and personalization on environmentally responsible behavior [10]. Research
in conservation psychology implies that animals help humans connect with nature [9]. Vining’s
literature review demonstrates the extensive evidence for strong emotional bonds between
humans and animals but she states that the answer to whether caring about animals or the
environment leads to environmentally responsible behavior remains open [12]. Technology may
provide a mechanism for leveraging these bonds to encourage behavior change. For example,
Tamagotchis are virtual pets requiring nurturing interaction in order to be sustained. This in turn
led to an emotional attachment to these virtual pets, for example owners mourned when their pets
“died” [2]. Lin and Strub’s “Fish’n’Steps” study is an example of how an interactive computer
game using a virtual pet, in this case fish, encourage physical activity [7].
Our approach integrates conservation psychology, a study which looks into relationships
between nature and humans, with persuasive technology, the study of how computers can
leverage psychological cues to motivate and influence behavior [3]. For example, motivators of
environmentally responsible behavior are more effective when they have a direct impact on
people's needs or concerns [1]. Also, caring for real animals can inspire conservation behavior
[12]. In this paper we show that an emotional connection to a virtual pet that responds to
environmental behavior can help motivate an individual by making that
behavior seem to directly impact an individual’s concerns.
2. Experiment
We conducted a one week, between subjects study to explore the effect
of higher attachment to a virtual pet (the attachment group) to lower
attachment to the same pet (the control group) on environmentally
responsible behavior. To create attachment, we used a story describing
environmental change, specifically the impact of climate change on the
habitat of polar bears, pre-tested to elicit sadness. We asked participants
in the attachment group to read it, reflect on their emotions and write
about environmental responsibility, and name the polar bear on their
display.
Participants were shown a Flash-based virtual polar bear on an ice floe
that would grow as they committed to environmentally responsible
actions and decrease as they chose not to commit to actions. As shown in Figure 1, the size of
the ice floe would change depending on the number of actions a subject committed to taking.
Our study tested the following hypotheses:
•H1: Commitments - Users who form emotional attachment to the virtual polar bear will commit
to more environmentally responsible actions than users who do not form bonds
•H2: Fulfilled Commitments - Users who form emotional attachment to the virtual polar bear
will fulfill (act on) their commitments
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
H1: Num Commitments H2: Num Sustained
Commitments
H3: Donations ($)
Mean Number of Units
Control
Attachment
Figure 2: (above) The attachment graph was
higher for all hypotheses, and H2 (Fulfilled
Commitments) is significant (F[1,11]=6.527,
p=.0309).
•H3: Donations - Users who form emotional attachment to the virtual polar bear will donate
more to a zoo than those from the control group
We recruited 20 subjects (10 in each
condition) associated with local universities.
Participants were given $15 and a shower
timer for their time. All participants
completed an initial survey at the start of the
experiment to test whether either group was
more likely to have higher motives for
environmentally responsible behavior and
whether this changed during the experiment.
We used a subset of questions from De
Young’s scales measuring competence and
participation [1]. Participants also completed
two additional scales both before and after
the main intervention (interacting with the
polar bear): the first measured levels of care
on agreeableness and empathy [5] and the
second measured overall environmental
concerns [6]. All scales had a reliability of .65 or higher, measured using Cronbach’s α (values
were α=.8615 for competence, α=.8920 for participation, α=.7579 for care and α=.655 for
environmental concern).
The actions are included in Table 1. Fourteen were taken from sixty actions previously designed
and tested as part of a field study of the StepGreen website [10]. We created an additional
action, “Take an environmental sustainability flyer and give it to a friend,” and made flyers
available to participants.
3. Results and Discussion
Out of the 20 participants, 60% were male and
40% female; 95% of the participants were
students. Out of the 20 participants, 19
completed the first task; we reached 11 to ask
about donations (5 control, 6 attachment), and
we were only able to reach 11 participants to ask
which actions they fulfilled (5 control, 6
attachment). The initial survey showed balance
across the groups in terms of motivation for
environmentally responsible behavior (p=.08833
and .08199).
1 Turn off the water while brushing your teeth
2 Turn off lights if you are leaving a room for more than 10 minutes
3 Wash only full loads of clothes
4 Wash only full loads of dishes
5 Dry only full loads of clothes
6 Carpool 1 day a week when you would otherwise drive
7 Pledge to ride the bus 1 day a week when you would otherwise drive
8 Combine trips in vehicle (i.e., visit multiple destinations on one trip)
9 Take the stairs instead of the elevator a minimum of 5 times per week
10 Take a shower instead of a bath
11 Restrict length of shower to 5 minut es
12 Use a low wattage night light
13 Lower heating thermostat to 68 degrees and wear warmer clothes
14 Unplug any electronic devices when not in use
15 Take an environmental sustainability flyer and give it to a friend
Table
1
-
List of Actions
As shown in Figure 2, participants in the attachment group had a higher mean number of
committed actions (H1), fulfilled commitments (H2) and a higher mean donation (H3). Of these,
the difference in fulfilled commitments was statistically significant: F[1,11]=6.527, p=.0309*.
The attachment group also demonstrated significantly greater environmental concern and greater
care after reading about and interacting with the polar bear (F[1,19]=5.1273, p=0.0369* and
F[1,19]=3.8124, p=.0675, respectively).
Our findings demonstrate that participants in the attachment group were more concerned about
the environment, and this translated directly into significantly higher reported actions. Of
particular interest is the fact that while there was not a significant difference in the number of
commitments between the groups, reported follow through in terms of fulfilling those
commitments was significantly higher. However, it is possible that participants in the attachment
group lied about their follow through out of guilt or some other emotion. Also, we do not know
how long these differences will be sustained.
4. Future Work
Our next step is to deploy the polar bear over a longer period of time, in a setting where we can
objectively measure its impact on action. This addresses the two biggest concerns mentioned
above. We plan to deploy the polar bear on a mobile platform that can track use of different
transportation options. Additionally, we are currently creating a virtual polar bear plugin for
MySpace and Facebook. The large numbers of users on sites such as MySpace (used by over
61.2 million unique visitors) and Facebook (over 19.5 million unique users)[8] presents exciting
opportunities to encourage personally- and socially-desirable change in behaviors. Users will be
able to publicly make commitments and have the status of their polar bear on display. Based on
consistency theory, users would be more likely to behave consistently with their commitment
[4]. This may also lead to further research on the impact peer pressure may have on
environmentally sustainable actions.
5. Reason for Attending
The work we described is an initial contribution to the issue of persuading individuals to take
more sustainable actions. As such, it addresses one of the three main topics of the workshop,
how to motivate sustainable action. Additionally, though there was no room to discuss it here,
our research is expanding to address the appropriate deployment platforms and messaging for
varied socio-economic and ethnic groups. We are excited by the opportunity to attend this
workshop and engage researchers on these critical fronts.
6. Author Bios
Tawanna Dillahunt is a first year Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research
interests include environmental sustainability and pervasive computing.
Geof Becker works at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon in Marketing and
Public Relations and is interested in encouraging development of online communities that
commit to positive social action.
Jennifer Mankoff is an assistant professor at CMU in the HCII. Her research interests include
environmental sustainability, pervasive computing, and Assistive Technologies.
Robert Kraut is a Herbert A. Simon Professor of HCI at CMU. He conducts research in four
major areas: online communities, everyday use of the Internet, Technology and conversation,
collaboration in small work groups, and computers in organizations.
7. References
1. De Young, R. (2003). Expanding and Evaluating Motives for Environmentally Responsible
Behavior. Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 56, No.3, pp. 509-526.
2. Donath, J. (2004). Artificial Pets: Simple Behaviors Elicit Complex Attachments. In M.
Bekoff (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, Greenwood Press.
3. Fogg, B.J. (2002). Persuasive Computers Using Technology to Change What We Think and
Do. Morgan Kaufman Publishers, San Francisco, CA.
4. Harmon-Jones, E. (2002). Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Perspective on Persuasion. The
Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice. Sage Publications. p. 99-116.
5. International Personality Item Pool (as of February 2008): A Scientific Collaboratory for the
Development of Advanced Measures of Personality and Other Individual Differences, Big-
Five Factors Markers: http://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm.
6. Kaufman, T. (1999). A Study of the Motivations Behind Heritage Site Selection in the
United States, PhD Dissertation, Virginia Tech.
7. Lin, J., Lindtner, M.S., Strub, H. (2006). Fish'n'Steps: Encouraging Physical Activity with an
Interactive Computer Game. in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on
Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 261-278.
8. McCarthy, C (September 13, 2007). Nielsen/NetRatings’ August social media numbers: Not
much change, CNet News.com. http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9777942-36.html.
9. Myers, O.E. Jr., Saunders C.D. (2002). Animals as links toward developing caring
relationships with the natural world. In Kahn and Kelert (eds). Children and Nature, 153-
178. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10. Mankoff, J, Matthews, D., Fussell, S.R., Johnson, M. (2007). Leveraging social networks to
motivate individuals to reduce their ecological footprints. In Proceedings of HICSS.
11. U.S. Department of Energy (2006). Annual Energy Review 2005. Energy Information
Administration, Washington, DC DOE/EIA-0384.
12. Vining, Joanne (2003). The Connection to Other Animals and Caring for Nature. Human
Ecology Review, Vol. 10, No. 2
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A study of the motivations behind heritage site selection in the United States /
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1999. Includes bibliographical references. Photocopy.
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Perspective on Persuasion. The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice
  • Jan 2002
  • 99-116
  • E Harmon-Jones
Harmon-Jones, E. (2002). Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Perspective on Persuasion. The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice. Sage Publications. p. 99-116.