Persuasive Technology in Climate Change Interventions: A Systematic Review Protocol (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The climate crisis is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Technological innovations particularly, persuasive technology have been identified as a veritable tool for effecting behaviour change in the climate-change domain. However, there is limited work on the synthesis of the findings of the existing literature on persuasive technology and climate-change interventions. Therefore, we aim to conduct a systematic review based on the PRISMA-P protocol to examine how persuasive technologies have been used hitherto as a motivational tool to address the problem of climate change and foster behaviour change. OBJECTIVE The objectives of this study are to explore, how effective is persuasive technology in fostering behaviour change aimed at reducing climate change, what persuasive strategies are being employed to promote positive behaviours aimed at reducing climate change, what behaviour theories are being employed in developing persuasive technologies aimed at reducing climate change, what are the behavioural outcomes targeted by persuasive technologies aimed at reducing climate change and what are the study methodologies being employed in persuasive technology/climate change research? METHODS Scopus, PubMed (MEDLINE), IEEE Xplore Digital Library, ACM Digital Library, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases were searched between October 30, 2020, and November 20, 2020, using specific keywords related to “persuasive technology” and "climate change." For the articles to be included in the systematic review, they must have been peer-reviewed user studies that evaluated the effectiveness of persuasive technology designs, prototypes, or implementations that promoted positive behaviours to reduce climate change. RESULTS Summarized findings of the eligible studies will be tabulated under specific themes as described in the objectives of the study. The findings will relate to the effectiveness of persuasive technologies, persuasive strategies employed in technical solutions for climate change, a range of applications of behavioural theories for climate change, targeted behavioural outcomes, etc. CONCLUSIONS The systematic review will help uncover empirical findings on behavioural outcomes related to climate-change persuasive interventions such as adoption intention, attitude, compliance with environmental guidelines, and adherence to pro-environmental behaviours.