Investigating User Emotional Responses to Eco-Feedback Designs

Abstract

Emotional responses to a product can be critical in influencing how the product will be used. This study explores the emotions that arise from users' interaction with eco-feedback products, and investigates links between emotions and users' resource conservation behaviors. In-lab experiments were conducted with 68 participants of varying backgrounds. Each participant was shown sketches of four conceptual designs of eco-feedback products and reported how they would feel and behave in different scenarios using the products. Two styles of eco-feedback design, quantitative and figurative, were compared to each other and were compared to neutral designs, which had little or no feedback information. Results showed that taking resource conservation actions such as turning off lights was highly correlated with negative emotions toward wasting resources, such as guilt, upset, embarrassment, and annoyance. Users' evaluations of esthetics, usefulness, and overall quality of eco-feedback products, however, were highly correlated with positive emotions toward resource conservation, described as satisfied, proud, interested, and joyful. Figurative designs were observed to evoke much stronger emotions among younger participants than older ones. Ultimately, we hope our findings are useful to the designers of eco-feedback products.

Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings

“…We want to assess whether emotionally rich products designed with information and feedback interventions can promote sustainable behavior. We expect that interventions that evoke strong emotions are more likely to encourage behavior change compared to interventions that do not [10]. Q3: How effective are positively framed and negatively framed messages in influencing sustainable resource consumption?…”

“…A survey-based study conducted by Bao, et al emphasized the importance of both the quantitative clarity and the strength of emotion evoked in designing eco-feedback interventions [17]. In another controlled lab study, they investigated the emotional responses related to different quantitative and figurative eco-feedback designs [10].…”

Exploring the Application of the FOX Model to Foster Pro-Environmental Behaviours in Smart Environments

“…Other related work was proposed by Yun, Aziz, and Lasternas [44], who explored the online feedback and control strategies for sustainability in the work environment. Finally, the work proposed by Bao et al [45,46] explored the impact of quantitative and emotional feedback, highlighting the relevance of providing both feedback types. Table 2 shows the key points of the exposed works.…”

“…Morgan et al, 2018 [43] Research work about co-design in a large organisation to boost sustainability. Bao et al, 2019 [45] Analysis of emotional eco-feedback.…”

Principles of Affective Design in Consumers’ Response to Sustainability Design Strategies

“…Some isolated relations among the elements in the model have already been analyzed, as the influence of some sustainability design strategies on certain factors of consumers' response, such as users' emotions, attitudes, consumer behavior or decision making [8,26,27,[32][33][34][35][36]. Some of the influences of consumers' sustainability values and concerns on their response have also been studied [37][38][39].…”