Persuasion, information technology, and the environmental citizen: An empirical study of the persuasion effectiveness of city applications

Abstract

As the negative environmental impacts of cities continue to grow, citizens must be involved in climate change mitigation initiatives. A range of policy instruments can be used by municipal policy makers to encourage citizens to engage in environmentally responsible behaviours. Information and communications technology (ICT) is an important lever for changing individuals' behaviours and thus is increasingly found among the policy approaches adopted by cities. This research focuses on cities' use of ICT-enabled persuasion. Combining the unimodel of persuasion with the persuasive system design framework, the research develops and tests a theoretical model explaining how dimensions of the user context (green identity, goal intention) and technology context (integration support) influence the persuasiveness of city-sponsored applications with respect to environmentally responsible behaviours performed in the home and community. A survey of 203 individuals in North America shows that goal intention and integration support provided by the applications significantly influence perceived persuasion effectiveness for environmentally responsible behaviours at home. For environmentally responsible behaviours in the community, all three independent variables have a positive influence on the perceived persuasion effectiveness. The research extends the digital government literature by investigating an emerging policy intervention and providing a novel theoretical explanation of how elements within an ICT-enabled persuasion event come together to affect individuals' behaviours. Furthermore, the research provides municipal policy makers with new insights into how to design an ICT-enabled policy instrument for encouraging greater environmental citizenship.