Designing a game based persuasive technology to promote pro-environmental behaviour (PEB)

It is generally argued that the current state of degradation to environment is predominantly due to lack of appropriate human behaviour. Members of the civil society are slowly awakening to the ill-effects of inefficient waste disposal and are trying to contribute to the well-being and maintenance of the world we live in. While rules and regulations have been formulated by the governing bodies for segregating waste, efforts in this direction have not translated into a veritable pro-environmental behaviour among citizens. Pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) refers to behaviour that benefits the environment or harms the environment as little as possible. Many social processes and norms exert influence over our behavior. According to a popular thesis on human behaviour, known as the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), an individual's intention towards behavior, subjective norms and perceived control over his/her behaviour together leads to intentions and behavior [1]. School children exhibit a responsibility to induce changes in social norms for environmental friendly behaviours and are also natural early adopters of technology in this endeavor. We explore the use of persuasive technologies where behaviour-oriented design techniques are employed to change behaviors of users through persuasion and social influence. In this paper, we propose an approach for designing persuasive technologies for stoking pro-environmental behaviour and initiating waste segregation at source.