Insights from the Review of Apps that Influence Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance. To influence people to be environmentally sustainable, several mobile apps exist to teach sustainable behaviours. These apps hold great promise as interventions for influencing people to live sustainable lives since they are often designed using behaviour change strategies. However, the effectiveness of these apps as behaviour change tools is unclear. In addition, despite people downloading these apps, their engagement level is still low. Research suggests that user experience and usability determine the adoption and usage of apps. Research also indicates that user experience and usability of apps can be gleaned from the reviews written by users on the app store. Thus, reviews are a good source of determining the user experience and usability of users. To determine the effectiveness of sustainability apps as behaviour change tools and the users’ experience with the apps, we reviewed 70 sustainability apps that are available on the Google Play Store. First, using a popular behaviour change framework, the App Behaviour Change Scale (ABACUS), we investigated the persuasive strategies implemented by the apps and how these strategies were designed and implemented to achieve the targeted design objectives. Second, using natural language processing, we identified the common themes in the user reviews of the apps. The preliminary results presented here can influence the design of apps for influencing environmentally sustainable behaviour.