Read about the 'I am Green' application on facebook in an article. I couldn't find any evidence of this being an application on Facebook, however, the concept was when someone signed up to facebook there would be options for them to click to see which eco friendly habits they adopted. For each tick you would gain a leaf on your profile. The idea was to be an encouragement for sustainable behaviour.
This got me thinking about other platforms that adopt this same idea. Ecosia was one of them. You have a tally in the corner of your screen when using their search engine, it shows you how many trees you've planted. I use Ecosia and this is mine:
I have planted over 2000 trees through using their search engine. This is positive reinforcement, providing you with a reward for doing a simple action.
Ecosia is a good example as it adopts a lot of the psychological theories I've been researching. You only have to make one change (set your search engine default to ecosia) and then you're constantly helping the environment. This links back to Mullins, Wakefield and Broun’s 2007 study.
Got me thinking about what other devices/software/accounts etc. use this method?
Trainsplit:
Here I booked a train journey to London through trainsplit/easyrail.
In the confirmation email it incorporated the amount of CO2 I'd saved by getting the train compared ot driving.
Both of these exampled show a reinforcement for the behaviour I was doing, however, they were both so subtle. I narely noticed on trainsplit the sentence (I highlighted it).
- Feels as though there should be more attention on these aspects if they're wanting to encourage the behaviour?
No comments:
Post a Comment