Participatory Environmentally Friendly Message Design: Influence of Message Features and User Characteristics

Abstract

Labels and declarations are one of the tools of environmental management aimed at improving human behavior with regard to the environment. The development process of environmental labels and declarations has been strongly recommended to include participatory consultation with users. Research studies on participatory design of environmentally friendly messages, however, have never been seen. The purpose of this study was to examine participatory environmentally friendly message design with consideration for the effects of message characteristics and user factors. Forty Hong Kong Chinese people adopted a participatory draw-and-tell approach by drawing 26 environmentally friendly messages related to eco-products, energy conservation, and recycling and waste management, and then verbally described their design drawings. The results showed that environmentally friendly messages which were familiar, concrete, easy to visualize, and contained clear context were favored by users, and users with high object imagery preference benefited most from the participatory design through the draw-and-tell approach. This study fills the gap in the literature about participatory design in environmental labels and declarations which are used for promoting eco-friendly behavior in daily life. The findings should help facilitate the participatory development process of environmentally friendly messages for conveying pro-environmental actions.

The Impact of Service Firm’s Environmentally Friendly Reputation in the Context of Revenue Management

“…The impact of firms’ environmentally friendly actions has been studied across various disciplines. For example, Chan and Ng (2020) examined how message characteristics and user factors influence environmentally friendly message design [ 43 ]. In addition, Hwang et al (2020) adopted the concept of a green image in the context of eco-friendly edible insect restaurants [ 44 ].…”

The effect of an eco-label on the booking decisions of air passengers

“…Environmental labels or eco-labels define, compile, test, and summarize the environmental performance of products or services and present those to the consumer in the easiest way possible (Buckley, 2002;Gallastegui, 2002;Ng and Chan, 2020). According to Bougherara and Combris (2009, 321), eco-labels "internalise the external effects on the environmental of production, consumption and disposal of products."…”

“…With the help of eco-labels, consumers should be able to compare different products or services regarding their environmental performance in the easiest way possible (Ng and Chan, 2020). Nevertheless, the success of an eco-label depends not only on whether it reduces the information and search costs but also on whether the consumer is aware of the eco-label and understands its meaning (Rihn, et al, 2019).…”

“…While ecolabels have proven successful in many markets and can be found on many products (e.g. Anderson et al, 2013;Ng and Chan, 2020;Sipic, 2017), they haven't yet received much attention in the aviation industry.…”

A Design Framework of Medical Wayfinding Signs for the Elderly: Based on the Situational Cognitive Commonness

“…To minimize the cognitive gap between designers and specific user groups, some studies have proposed symbol design methods based on the principle of user participation [ 2 , 9 , 10 ]. According to this principle, users can draw on their ideas about the symbols and designers analyze these ideas to extract representing graphics, which have “cognitive commonness”—that is, constrained by the experience of the objective world, the cognitions of a specific group of people share certain characteristics and patterns, which reflect the common cognitive structure of the group [ 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”