Care-Based Eco-Feedback Augmented with Generative AI: Fostering Pro-Environmental Behavior through Emotional Attachment

Lights out! With the escalating climate crisis, eco-feedback has gained prominence over the last decade. However, traditional approaches could be underperforming as they often use data-driven strategies and assume that people only need additional information about their consumption to change behavior. A proposed path to overcome this issue is to design eco-feedback to foster emotional connections with users. However, not much is known about the effectiveness of such designs. In this paper, we propose a novel care-based eco-feedback system. Central to the system is a Tamagotchi-inspired digital character named Infi who gets its life force from the user’s energy savings. Additionally, we harness the latest advancements in generative artificial intelligence to enhance emotional attachment through conversational interactions that users can have with Infi. The results of a randomized controlled experiment (N=420) convey the fact that this design increases emotional attachment, which in turn increases energy-saving behavior.