Persuasive Services is a research project exploring the possibilities of ICT (information and communication technologies) for helping us making better environmental choices.

Persuasive Services is part of the Centre for Sustainable Communications, a joint research center at The Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm (KTH) between the Media department and the Strategic Environmental Analysis department.

This project is one of the pillars of the Centre for Sustainable Communications (changing behavior) together with mediating meetings and transforming communication industry.

Project Description

Only fairly recently environmental questions have evolved from being of minority interest to widely accepted mainstream view in the developed world. Concepts such as sustainability,
climate change, carbon dioxide, biofuel, renewable energy, hybrid cars, ecological food etc. have become part of the media debate and are in everyday use.
At the same time information and media technology is becoming more accessible and ubiquitous. There is more information linked to the real world, more objects that can behave
intelligently, and more ways in which the information infrastructures and the people can interact. We can use these technologies to increase efficiency of human activities and to
change the way we live, which may result in reduction of harmful effects of our lifestyles on environment.

Persuasive Services project works on concrete solutions for using ICT to promote more sustainable everyday decisions to combat the effects of climate change. The project
combines three different competence areas and research method traditions of our centre:

(1) creation, collection and modelling of sustainability-related knowledge and data

(2) understanding of socio-cultural dimension of human behavior and its relation to sustainable development

(3) prototyping and evaluation of new services, especially on mobile devices.

Three important areas that provide opportunities for novel ICT-based services have been identified in our project:

1. TRANSPORTATION: Encouraging low-carbon transportation options using ICT applications by making them simpler to use, and helping the users to see the advantages of
these alternatives.

2. HOUSING AND ENERGY: Increasing energy effectiveness in households using multimedia monitoring of energy use.

3. FOOD CONSUMPTION: Mobile services for providing sustainability related information regarding everyday consumption decisions on food.