The idea of a better world as a click away : exploring digital platforms as enablers of user behaviour for social sustainability

Abstract

Sustainable development has gained prominence in policy and academic discourse, but progress toward its objectives remains uneven. The social pillar of sustainability, which covers equity, safety, participation, and community well-being, has received less attention than the environmental pillar. Sustainability is enacted not by structural change alone but through the everyday behaviours of individuals who engage with the innovations designed to advance it. This dissertation examines how digital platforms shape user behaviours and experiences related to sustainability, with a particular focus on the social dimension.

The dissertation comprises four studies. The first systematic review examines how digital platforms contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The second and third examine socio-cognitive and design factors shaping socially sustainable behaviour on a digital platform, integrating the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the Technology Acceptance Model, and Equity Theory; the third also situates platforms within the Multi-Level Perspective in sustainability transitions. The second uses ridge regression and the third uses moderated regression and mediation analysis, both drawing on survey data from a social sustainability platform in the Global South. The fourth adopts a critical lens grounded in techno-solutionism, using sentiment analysis and neural topic modelling on user discourse from four established sustainability-oriented platforms in the Global North. The findings show that platforms cultivate socially sustainable behaviour through distinct mechanisms: self-efficacy, perceived ease of use, effort fairness, internalised social concern, and users’ variety-seeking behaviour. User discourse reveals that sustainability is rarely foregrounded in everyday engagement with platforms designed to advance it. The dissertation contributes to platform scholarship by centring the social dimension and by shifting attention toward user discourse through the critical lens of techno-solutionism, and to sustainability transitions research by providing behavioural micro-foundations. It concludes that platforms advance sustainability only when design and engagement conditions translate user participation into substantive outcomes and recommends attending to these conditions rather than treating adoption as evidence of impact.