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Welcome to the Weeping Whales wiki! We used to be called DyingPolarBears ;)
This year in July, the Queensland government just enacted the plastic bag ban. Places like Woolworths and Coles no longer provide free plastic bags to their customers. People are forced to pay extra for bags or bring their own reusable bags. However, this kind of habitual behaviour is hard to change in a short term because people are so used to it, and many are not willing to give up their convenience for the good of the environment. In fact, our background research indicates that extra charge on plastic bags is not effective at preventing people from using them. Therefore, although governmental actions can somehow be effective in reducing plastic bag usage, it is more important to raise people’s awareness of the different impact of plastic bags on the environment and ultimately make the people change their own behaviour in a self-motivated manner.
According to our research, feedbacks on effort and positive encouragement can be effective in behavioural change. Therefore, our team aims to discover whether visualizing people’s contribution to environmental protection helps motivate them to reduce plastic bag usage and encourage them to use reusable bags. With this major research question in mind and through developing a prototype, our team also aims to explore questions such as what kind of visualization works better on people? For instance, is it more effective to show the numbers of plastic bags they avoided using per day, or is it visualizing the changes on the environment due to their behaviour of not using plastic bags more effective? We would also want to find out what kind of impacts people care more about. Is it the dead turtles or the destroyed landscape that people care more about? These are all questions our team has to try to answer in order to determine what feedbacks would be more effective in fostering people’s pro-environmental attitude, specifically on plastic bag usage. By the end of this semester, our team aims to develop a prototype that incorporates these elements and results of our findings.
Does the visualization of personal contribution to the environment help motivate people to help reduce plastic bag usage?
Potential research on:
- What kind of feedbacks for their contribution? (words, images...etc) and which might work better?
- From the perspective of environment: how I am affecting the environment? how the environment is changing because of my effort?
- From the perspective of people: how many plastic bags have I avoided using today? how many times have I remembered to bring my own reusable bag?
- From the perspective of society: pro-environmental attitude, ethical beliefs, change in my social role, my image of being pro-environmental, collaborative effort (e.g. your community/ people around you are using reusable bags on a regular basis...etc)
- What kind of visualization? (e.g. numbers of plastic bags avoided using, numbers of turtles saved, rate of dissolving)
- Are feedbacks enough? or other visible rewards should be included?
- Of all the effects, what do people care the most? (this can be used for feedbacks) --> we can also learn how much people know about the effects of plastic bag usage (article)
- Marine life: drying turtles, dying whales
- Clogged sewage system
- Aesthetic: pictures of sceneries damaged by the plastic? visualizing the future earth
- Health: natural landscapes help us recover faster
- Economics: government spent a lot of money on cleaning up plastic waste (and we're paying for it)
- Slow dissolving rate, and in fact plastics don't completely biodegrade
Identify and describe the domain will you be working in and the problem space will you be exploring. Support and illustrate your description with sources and insights from the combined domain research and any relevant additional sources.
Each year, the consumption of single-use plastic bag is one trillion which is equivalent to using 2 million in a minute. (reference) To degrade plastic bags, it can take up to 15 - 1000 years (Li et al., 2016). They usually break down into small pieces and slowly degrade depending on the environmental condition. However, the exact time to sufficiently degrades the plastic is still unclear. Research has noted that plastic pollution is having a severe harmful impact on marine life, especially turtles and seabirds( Law, 2017). Marine debris, mainly plastics is harmful to a range of wildlife. As suggested by the research scientists working in CSIRO, Hardesty at al. (2014), found out that approximately 100,000 mammals and 1 million seabirds died each year because of plastic waste. This is because most animals mistook the plastic as food like jellyfish. The problem can be even worse around the southern hemisphere regions near New Zealand and Australia where there is a great number of species (The Guardian, 2015). It is estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean (Neufeld, 2016). As the problem is getting worse, there is an urgent need for designing sustainable mechanism is protecting the environment and the marine life.
Recently, Queensland has started the plastic bag ban on 1 July 2018 ( Queensland Government, 2018a). While other cities in Australia and many countries have been doing this for years, some people feel angry about the ban and abuse the staff in Coles and Woolworths (Brook, 2018). Some even thought that the supermarkets are doing this for profit selling the reusable bags (Chung, 2018).
There are different reasons why the ban backfires. A study conducted in Malaysia looking at the plastic bag ban in the university have found that people experience psychological discomfort including unease and anger towards the ban (Mustafa & Yusoff, 2011). This is mainly due to a lack of freedom of choice. When people is not given a choice, but instead being forced to do something, they will lack the motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000) in continuing the behaviour and may even lead to a boomerang effect. Besides, people are often unaware of the aversive effect of plastic and don’t have sufficient knowledge of the environment (Zhu, 2011). However, knowledge alone is insufficient to motivate long-term behaviour. Solving environmental issues require human effort.
To change human behaviour, we need to understand the human nature. From the view of psychological egoism, human does everything for self-interest and is always motivated by the desire for one’s own welfare (Slote, 1964). Pro-environmental behaviour is a kind of altruistic behaviour which is contradicted to satisfying self-interest. Making people reduce the usage of plastic bag is challenging. People resist changes in lifestyle because it requires them to cut back from the comfort of life and make a sacrifice to their self-interest, pleasure and convenience. No man do anything solely for the benefits of others without having personal motives (Nietzche, 1996). However, this does not mean that people do not care about others, but it’s simply that we consider for our self-interest first. This is nothing wrong with doing things for our self-interest because that is how we are. This is just the human nature.
This leads us to the central problem, the issue of motivation and persuasion. According to broaden-and-build theory, experiencing positive emotion can expand people’s thought action repertoire which will lead to higher acceptance and consideration of new behaviour (Fredrickson, 2001). It is evidenced that people will be more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviour if there are behavioural incentives like social desirability and perceived positive feedback (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1980). Motivation is also largely influenced by values especially those in our immediate social network including family and friends (Fuhrer, 1995).
We also discover a problem with visibility. People’s effort and contribution cannot be seen and this makes it hard for them to feel motivated. From this, we started looking at research that study visualisation. Data visualisation has been showed to have a powerful persuasive effect in term of behaviour change(Pandey, 2014). Data tracking and visualisation are proved to be effective in persuading behaviour change. Specifically, graphical information is more effective compared to textual information. Providing real-time feedback on a person’s action can increase environmental awareness and pro-environmental behaviour (Holmes, 2007). Therefore, we would like to look at how visualisation and what kind of data work best in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour change.
Relying on stores providing plastic bags has become people’s habit. Bringing their own reusable bag is more inconvenient because people are not used to bringing one. To understand how such behavior could potentially be changed, we did some research on habitual behavior. Hermsen et al.’s (2016) article, “Using feedback through digital technology to disrupt and change habitual behavior: A critical review of current literature,” reviews other research articles’ findings on methods that are effective in changing human habits. One critical finding is that feedbacks seem to be an effective factor in persuading people to change their habits. Positive feedbacks and reflection on personal progress seem to motivate people to make changes. Also, the article points out that the feedback mechanism works even better when there is a set behavior goal. However, this article did not specifically discuss what kinds of feedbacks people are more motivated by, and the context does not specifically target behavior related to environmental concerns, so it is also our team’s goal to find out what kind of feedbacks should be provided to people who make effort and to reduce the usage of plastic bags, as well as what feedbacks would change their attitude about plastic bags.
Our team also looked at the factors that influence people’s decision on using plastic bags. Sun et al.’s (2017) article, “Understanding consumer’s intention to use plastic bags: using an extended theory of planned behaviour model,” indicates that convenience and ethical beliefs are the two factors that have greater effects on the consumers. Other factors that are also significant were environmental concerns, attitude, and social pressure. What we found interesting was that the authors point out, “when individuals hold positive attitude towards using plastic bags and think that using plastic bags is valuable and convenient, they will form intention to use plastic bags. In contrast, when individuals hold negative attitude towards using plastic bags, they are unlikely to use them.” This explains the importance of people’s attitude and perception regarding environmental issues, which they influence the actions they take. Other factors such as environmental concerns and social pressure also help us think of the different options we have when designing feedbacks.
We are targeting people who don’t have any knowledge about the negative effects of using plastic bags. These people are the main group of people, who continue to use plastic bags more than others and feel no guilt for such behaviour. It is because this group of people have not been exposed to knowledge of environmental protection and do not have awareness of impacts of plastic waste. Once they are aware of the negative effects of plastic bag usage, they may refuse or reduce using plastic bags, and their awareness may even affect their behaviour of dealing with other plastic products.
We are also targeting people who have some knowledge in the effects of using plastic bags but are not taking actions to reduce the usage. Many people are aware that plastic bags cause damage to our nature, but the convenience makes it difficult for them to get rid of such habit. This means that it is not that these people do not care about the environment, but rather that they lack the motivation to change their habit. Thus, our target audience is also these people who somehow care about the environment but needs the encouragement and incentive to take actions.
This project demonstrates that displaying real time videos of environmental change to people helps raise environmental awareness. However, whether it drives behavioral change is not proved.
Chinese and Australian government forbid offering customers free plastic bags and instead customers are asked to pay for plastic bags if they have to use plastic bags.
ALDI is a local supermarket in Australia that never provides plastic bags. Customers never complain about it because they don't have the expectation of being provided with plastic bags. This supermarket helps create a norm and nurture a habit where consumers bring their own bags.
Oroeco is a mobile application that rewards user with points when user use reusable bags.
http://www.footprintcalculator.org/ This is a survey that ask people on their daily behavior which will be related to the environment and carbon footprint. After completing the survey, results will show user the number of planets that is needed if everyone is doing the same thing as the user.
It is noted in a study that using personal and injunctive normative message is effective in encouraging shoppers to user few plastic bags. ( De Groot et al., 2013).
(Eg. Green Elephant) This type of application aims to remind people of their reusable shopping bags. Users need to set their preference location for the reminder first, then the app will alert a message to remind users once users get close to their pre-set locations.
| Week | Dates | Phase | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | 29 Aug (Wed) | Project Planning & Research Phase | Group Formation |
| 6 | 29 Aug (Wed) | Project Planning & Research Phase | Research Compilation from zotero and padlet, Brainstorm Ideas on possible solutions |
| 6 | 1 Sept (Sat) | Project Planning & Research Phase | Putting together research questions to answer to get to a possible solution to this issue |
| 7 | 5 Sept (Wed) | Project Planning & Research Phase | Pitched concept to class and check for any gaps in proposal + Plan steps for creating initial prototype |
| 8 | 11 Sept (Tue) | Solution Prototyping Phase | Start Prototype using paper prototype for initial testing |
| 8 | 12 Sept (Wed) | Solution Prototyping Phase | Refine the prototype creating a digital version with more details using Adobe XD |
| 8 | 12 Sept (Wed) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Seek out users to test the prototype and gain answer to research question 1 |
| 9 | 18 Sept (Tue) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Analyse and summarise prototyping test results |
| 9 | 19 Sept (Tue) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Stand-up / Progress Update Presentation |
| 10 | 2 Oct (Tue) | Solution Prototyping Phase | Adjust and refine Prototype to answer research question 2 |
| 10 | 3 Oct (Wed) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Test on Users and analyse feedback |
| 11 | 9 Oct (Tue) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Analyse and Summarise feedback |
| 11 | 10 Oct (Wed) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Stand-up / Progress Update Presentation |
| 12 | 16 Oct (Tue) | Solution Prototyping Phase | Improve upon the prototype with the test results |
| 12 | 17 Oct (Wed) | Solution Prototyping Phase | Refine Prototype in preparation to showcase |
| 13 | 24 Oct (Wed) | Testing & Evaluation Phase | Showcase the latest iteration of the prototype |