Sustainability by Design: How to Promote Sustainable Tourism Behavior Through Persuasive Design?
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Sustainability by Design: How to Promote Sustainable Tourism Behavior through Persuasive Design A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design in the Myron E. Ullman Jr. School of Design College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning by [Zhaoran Liu] Bachelor of Industrial Design, Northeast Forestry University Committee Chair: Doehler, Steven 3/28/2019 i ABSTRACT Sustainable tourism has become the shift in tourism development because it is benefiting residents, tourists and environment. Persuasion for sustainability is not relatively new, notions like “green design’’ and “green technology’’ consider changing people’s habits through persuasive system design. Starting from these facts, this thesis project aims to promote sustainable tourism through persuasive design. The method of persuasive design evaluation showed that effective persuasive designs are existing in tourism programs today to influence tourists’ behaviors. Some evaluation got bad results because people don’t understand what trigger behavior change effectively and efficiently. This thesis project aims to understand tourists’ behaviors and attitudes and find out the barriers for tourists to be green on tours. ii From the methods of the sustainable behavior survey and the sustainable attitude survey, the significant negative sustainable tourism behaviors and attitudes were uncovered. They were organized into 6 significant persuasion contents. From the interviews, the tourists’ barriers to perform the target sustainable behaviors were identified. In the end, the persuasive design principles were proposed specifically for sustainable tourism. At the same time, from the experiment of promoting sustainable tourism behaviors, a new persuasive design methodology and a persuasive design process were proposed. iii iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank my thesis chair Doehler, Steven, of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at University of Cincinnati, and my thesis advisor Craig Vogel, of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at University of Cincinnati. Prof. Doehler and Prof. Craig consistently allowed this thesis to be my own work but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it. I would also like to thank my participants who were involved in the survey for this research project. Without their passionate participation and input, the survey could not have been successfully conducted. Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and v writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF TABLES x LIST OF FIGURES xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 3 2.1 Sustainable Tourism 3 2.1.1 Impacts for Tourism 3 2.1.2 Sustainable Tourism is the Response to the Negative Impacts 6 2.1.3 Mass Tourism and Sustainability 8 2.1.4 Influencing Tourists’ Behaviors as A Strategy 9 2.2 Persuasive Technology 10 2.2.1 The Introduction of Persuasive Technology 10 2.2.2 Fogg’s Behavior Change Model 12 2.2.3 Persuasive System Design Model 14 2.3 Sustainability by Persuasive Design 17 CHAPTER 3. thEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 19 CHAPTER 4. METHODOLOGY 23 4.1 Persuasive Design Evaluation 24 4.1.1 Persuasive Design Evaluation Framework 24 4.1.2 The Eight Persuasive Designs 27 4.2 Tourists Research 31 4.2.1 Participants’ Characteristics 32 vii 4.2.2 Sustainable Tourism Behavior Survey 33 4.2.3 Sustainable Tourism Attitude Survey 35 4.2.4 Interview 36 CHAPTER 5. RESULTS 37 5.1 Persuasive Design Evaluation 37 5.1.1 Allow Tourists to get access to the local community easily 39 5.1.2 Make the Program Process Transparent 41 5.1.3 Offer A Reward to Tourists When They Make Responsible Decisions 43 5.1.4 Offer General Suggestions About How to Support the Local Community 44 5.2 Survey 46 5.2.1 The Gap Between Tourists’ Behaviors and Attitudes 46 5.2.2 Significant Negative Behaviors and Attitudes 50 5.3 Interviews 52 5.3.1 Interview Data Analysis 53 5.4 Significant Persuasion Contents 57 CHAPTER 6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 60 6.1 Strategy Evaluation Framework 61 6.2 Design Principles for Six Sustainable Tourism Contents 65 6.2.1 Content One: Choosing Transportation Modes with Low Consumption and Pollution 66 6.2.2 Content Two: Staying in Eco-friendly Hotels 67 6.2.3 Content Three: Helping Local People in Need 68 6.2.4 Content Four: Learning and Respecting Local Culture 70 6.2.5 Content Five: Avoiding Waste and Pollution 71 6.2.6 Content Six: Visiting the Local Restaurants and Shops 72 6.3 Design Implementation 73 6.3.1 How to Apply the Persuasive Design Principles 74 6.3.2 Design Implementation One: Travel Navigation App Design 74 6.3.3 Design Implementation Two: Room Monitor Design 76 6.3.4 Design Implementation Three: Local Story Sharing 78 viii 6.3.5 Design Implementation Four: 80 6.3.6 Design Implementation Five: Trash Disposing Mobile Game 82 6.3.7 Design Implementation Six: Food Making Sharing App Design 83 6.4 Persuasive Design Process 85 6.5 Discussion 87 REFERENCES 89 APPENDIX A 95 APPENDIX B 96 APPENDIX C 103 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1 – The PSD Model 15 Table 2 – Revised PSD Model 16 Table 3– Research methods and data collection 23 Table 4 – Evaluation framework terms explanation 26 Table 5 – Participants characteristics 33 Table 6 – Tourism behaviors in the survey 34 Table 7 – Tourism attitudes in the survey 36 Table 8 – Grading standards of Behavior and attitude survey 47 Table 9 – Average survey scores 48 Table 10 – Barrier categories 56 Table 11 – Barrier categories explanation 57 Table 12 – Barrier Categories to the persuasion contents 59 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 – The emerging of sustainable tourism 7 Figure 2 – Locating sustainable tourism 8 Figure 3 – Fogg's Behavior Model (FBM) 13 Figure 4 – Theoretical Framework 20 Figure 5 – Persuasive design analysis Framework 25 Figure 6 – The Average Response of the behavior Survey 50 Figure 7 – The Average Response of the Attitude Survey 50 Figure 8 – Interview Reponses Color Coding 53 Figure 9 – Coded Barriers and Categories 55 Figure 10 – Persuasive strategies evaluation 63 Figure 11 – Travel Navigation App Design 76 Figure 12 – Room Monitor Design 78 Figure 13 – Local Story Sharing 80 Figure 14 – History Reproduction Experience Design 81 Figure 15 – Trash Depositing Game 83 Figure 16 – Food Making Video Sharing App Design 85 xi Figure 17 – Persuasive Design Process 86 xii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION In the 1980s, the concept of sustainable tourism emerged to respond the negative impacts of conventional mass tourism on the destinations. Sustainable tourism has become a shift in tourism development because it creates a win-win situation for residents, tourists, and the environment (Fennell, 2008). Line in with the concept of sustainable development: “development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (WCED,1087),” one main purpose of this study is to find an effective way to prompt sustainable tourism in the era of rapid development of information technology. As a result of mass tourism which has become a reality of our contemporary life (Adriana, 2003), many negative impacts of tourism have been observed in destinations. Most of these impacts come from tourists unformed or delinquent behaviors (Hall & Lew,2009; Mason, 2008). Past studies have confirmed that regulating behaviors of tourists can be an effective strategy to minimize the adverse environmental and social impact of tourism (Lee & Moscardo, 2005; Powell & Ham, 2008). 1 There are many different approaches can be outlined to manage tourists’ behaviors, the approach that will be talked in this paper is persuasive design. In recent years, sustainability in the field of human- computer interaction research has been a popular topic of interest, which aims at designing persuasive systems to change users’ behaviors towards a sustainable action (Mustaquim &Nystrom, 2014). The evidence is that there are many persuasive systems designed for sustainability, but some of them didn’t work successfully because designers and researchers didn’t understand what factors led to behavior change (Fogg, 2009). The key challenge to the success of the persuasive design is the understanding of behavior change. Without this, the design of persuasive experience is mostly guessing at a solution. 2 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Internet devises applications to influence people’s behaviors are numerous in many domains, ranging from health to education to sales. Before exploring the opportunities to promote tourists’ sustainable behaviors through internet innovations, there is a need to researching on the history and development of tourism, persuasive technology in promoting people’s behavior change, and sustainability through persuasive design. 2.1 Sustainable Tourism 2.1.1 Impacts for Tourism “Tourism at the turn of the century is growing faster than even our most optimistic predictions.” ---Francesco Frangialli, World Tourism Organization Tourism has developed to become one of the world’s most important industrial sectors, growing twice as fast as the world’s gross domestic product (GPD) for the last 30 years, and is forecasted to double in the next 3 20 years (Adriana, 2003). The term “largest industry in the world” is commonly used with tourism. The World Tourism Organization (2003) estimated that tourism is one of the top five export earners for 83% of all countries. In 1998, tourism ranked top in export earnings compared with other industrial sectors. What’s more, most economic benefits of tourism are increased job opportunities and income for local people.