Design of a persuasive recommendation agent to promote environmentally friendly products

This study focuses on designing a product recommendation agent (PRA) that would persuade its users to purchase environmentally preferable products. To develop such a PRA, the literature on subjects including “green” consumption, persuasion, and persuasive technology is reviewed. After considering the challenges to inducing “green” behaviours and leveraging many persuasive technologies, we employ the attributes trade-offs transparency tool to facilitate users’ understanding of “green” products. We also utilize the conditioning mechanism through the associative or propositional process in the persuasive design. This mechanism aims to elicit users’ implicit or explicit “green” attitudes, which generate “green” behaviours. An experiment with 180 participants was conducted to test the effectiveness of the conditioning mechanism of the persuasive design. The participants were asked to perform a shopping task and give feedback on their experience. Their preferred product attributes, product choices, and “green” attitudes were recorded. The experiment showed that the conditioning mechanism greatly predisposed the participants toward “greenness” through the associative process. As a result, it successfully persuaded them to have a “greener” attitude and choose “greener” products, whether the purchasing task required a sustainable product or not. In addition, participants indicated higher perceptions on PRAs with the persuasive design.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat