Abstract
This paper describes the design and implementation of a mobile app, Smiling Earth, to support citizens to contribute to climate change by being aware of their carbon footprint and making changes in their daily energy consumption and transportation. One of the main aims of this work is to explore the ways in which ICT could help raise awareness and educate citizens about their actions and their consequences on the environment. The Smiling Earth app is designed to visualise data about citizens’ activities and to motivate citizens to change their behavior to reduce their CO2 emissions by adopting a healthier lifestyle. The app takes a broader perspective of CO2 emissions, bringing together the transport and energy sectors. The design process and a preliminary evaluation of Smiling Earth is presented in the paper. This work has been conducted as a part of the EU H2020 DESENT project.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
References
Statistics Norway: Survey of consumer expenditure 2012 (2017). https://www.ssb.no/en/inntekt-og-forbruk/statistikker/fbu. Accessed 26 June 2017
Froehlich, J., et al.: UbiGreen: investigating a mobile tool for tracking and supporting green transportation habits. In: CHI 2009, pp. 1043–1052. ACM (2009)
Granell, C., et al.: Future internet technologies for environmental applications. J. Environ. Model. Softw. 78, 1–15 (2016)
Nyblom, Å., Eriksson, E.: Time is of essence - changing the horizon of travel planning. In: 2nd International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S 2014). Atlantis Press (2014)
Fogg, B.J.: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco (2003)
DESENT: Smart decision support system for urban energy and transportation (2016). www.jpi-urbaneurope.eu/desent. Accessed 14 Nov 2019
Brewer, R.S., et al.: Lights off. Game on. The Kukui cup: a dorm energy competition. In: CHI 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada (2011)
Reeves, B., Cummings, J.J., Anderson, D.: Leveraging the engagement of games to change energy behavior. In: CHI 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada (2011)
Shiraishi, M., et al.: Using individual, social and economic persuasion techniques to reduce CO2 emissions in a family setting. In: Persuasive 2009, Claremont, California, USA (2009)
Takayama, C., Lehdonvirta, V.: EcoIsland: a system for persuading users to reduce CO2 emissions. In: Workshop on Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability, pp. 73–76 (2008)
Glogovac, B., et al.: Ducky: an online engagement platform for climate communication. In: Nordic CHI 2016 (2016)
Dillahunt, T., et al.: Motivating environmentally sustainable behavior changes with a virtual polar bear. In: Foth, M., et al. (ed.) Workshop on Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability, pp. 18–22 (2008)
Caroleo, B., et al.: Measuring the change towards more sustainable mobility: MUV impact evaluation approach. Systems 7, 30 (2019)
Di Dio, S., Lissandrello, E., Schillaci, D., Caroleo, B., Vesco, A., D’Hespeel, I.: MUV: a game to encourage sustainable mobility habits. In: Gentile, M., Allegra, M., Söbke, H. (eds.) GALA 2018. LNCS, vol. 11385, pp. 60–70. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11548-7_6
Prochaska, J.O., Velicer, W.F.: The transtheoretical model of health behavior change. Am. J. Health Promot. 12(1), 38–48 (1997)
Statistics Norway: Emissions of greenhouse gases, 1990–2015, final figures. https://www.ssb.no/en/natur-og-miljo/statistikker/klimagassn/aar-endelige/2016-12-13?fane=tabell&sort=nummer&tabell=287212. Accessed 28 June 2017
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Typical Passenger Vehicle: Office of Transportation and Air Quality, EPA (2014)
Davis, F.D.: Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Q. 13(3), 319–339 (1989)
Minh, C.: Mobile app: integrated financial, energy and transport services. Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, p. 123 (2017)
Gómez Maureira, M.A., Kniestedt, I.: Games that make curious: an exploratory survey into digital games that invoke curiosity. In: Clua, E., Roque, L., Lugmayr, A., Tuomi, P. (eds.) ICEC 2018. LNCS, vol. 11112, pp. 76–89. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99426-0_7
Oliveira, M., Petersen, S.: The choice of serious games and gamification. In: Ma, M., Oliveira, M.F., Baalsrud Hauge, J. (eds.) SGDA 2014. LNCS, vol. 8778, pp. 213–223. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11623-5_18
Acknowledgements
This work has been funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme, under the grant agreement No. 857160. Smiling Earth was implemented and evaluated by 2 MSc, Celine Minh and Ragnhild Larsen, and a summer student at NTNU. The authors would like to thank NTE and the participants of the workshops for their valuable contributions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Petersen, S.A., Petersen, I., Ahcin, P. (2020). Smiling Earth - Raising Citizens’ Awareness on Environmental Sustainability. In: Themistocleous, M., Papadaki, M. (eds) Information Systems. EMCIS 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 381. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44322-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44322-1_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44321-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44322-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)