Persuasive technology: A systematic review on the role of computers in awareness study

This paper reviews an empirical research of persuasive technology (PT) with the aim are to: (i) examine the result of the 25 persuasive technology studies related to awareness as the intended outcome, (ii) investigate the effects of persuasive technology usage to target users (iii) to examine computer roles in creating awareness to users and the effects of persuasive technology to the domain of studies.The main aim of this review is to assist researchers developing a reference in setting a future research in a persuasive technology particularly in awareness domain. Result from the review indicates that persuasive technology has the ability to increase user awareness toward certain context or issues.Most of the studies shows that the computer as a media and social actor gives more impact to increase the awareness compared to the computer as a tool.It can be concluded that understanding the appropriate persuasive strategy is important in helping researchers developing effective applications towards the intended outcome. This paper also has an implications towards designing persuasive system and as a references for future research

Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse

The goal of argumentation mining, an evolving research field in computational linguistics, is to design methods capable of analyzing people's argumentation. In this article, we go beyond the state of the art in several ways. (i) We deal with actual Web data and take up the challenges given by the variety of registers, multiple domains, and unrestricted noisy user-generated Web discourse. (ii) We bridge the gap between normative argumentation theories and argumentation phenomena encountered in actual data by adapting an argumentation model tested in an extensive annotation study. (iii) We create a new gold standard corpus (90k tokens in 340 documents) and experiment with several machine learning methods to identify argument components. We offer the data, source codes, and annotation guidelines to the community under free licenses. Our findings show that argumentation mining in user-generated Web discourse is a feasible but challenging task.Comment: Cite as: Habernal, I. & Gurevych, I. (2017). Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse. Computational Linguistics 43(1), pp. 125-17

How to Achieve Ethical Persuasive Design: A Review and Theoretical Propositions for Information Systems

Persuasive system design (PSD) is an umbrella term for designs in information systems (IS) that can influence people’s attitude, behavior, or decision making for better or for worse. On the one hand, PSD can improve users’ engagement and motivation to change their attitude, behavior, or decision making in a favorable way, which can help them achieve a desired outcome and, thus, improve their wellbeing. On the other hand, PSD misuse can lead to unethical and undesirable outcomes, such as disclosing unnecessary information or agreeing to terms that do not favor users, which, in turn, can negatively impact their wellbeing. These powerful persuasive designs can involve concepts such as gamification, gamblification, and digital nudging, which all have become prominent in recent years and have been implemented successfully across different sectors, such as education, e-health, e-governance, e-finance, and digital privacy contexts. However, such persuasive influence on individuals raises ethical questions as PSD can impair users’ autonomy or persuade them towards a third party’s goals and, hence, lead to unethical decision-making processes and outcomes. In human-computer interaction, recent advances in artificial intelligence have made this topic particularly significant. These novel technologies allow one to influence the decisions that users make, to gather data, and to profile and persuade users into unethical outcomes. These unethical outcomes can lead to psychological and emotional damage to users. To understand the role that ethics play in persuasive system design, we conducted an exhaustive systematic literature analysis and 20 interviews to overview ethical considerations for persuasive system design. Furthermore, we derive potential propositions for more ethical PSD and shed light on potential research gaps

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Argument Strength is in the Eye of the Beholder: Audience Effects in Persuasion

Americans spend about a third of their time online, with many participating in online conversations on social and political issues. We hypothesize that social media arguments on such issues may be more engaging and persuasive than traditional media summaries, and that particular types of people may be more or less convinced by particular styles of argument, e.g. emotional arguments may resonate with some personalities while factual arguments resonate with others. We report a set of experiments testing at large scale how audience variables interact with argument style to affect the persuasiveness of an argument, an under-researched topic within natural language processing. We show that belief change is affected by personality factors, with conscientious, open and agreeable people being more convinced by emotional arguments.Comment: European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2017

Sustainability, transport and design: reviewing the prospects for safely encouraging eco-driving

Private vehicle use contributes a disproportionately large amount to the degradation of the environment we inhabit. Technological advancement is of course critical to the mitigation of climate change, however alone it will not suffice; we must also see behavioural change. This paper will argue for the application of Ergonomics to the design of private vehicles, particularly low-carbon vehicles (e.g. hybrid and electric), to encourage this behavioural change. A brief review of literature is offered concerning the effect of the design of a technological object on behaviour, the inter-related nature of goals and feedback in guiding performance, the effect on fuel economy of different driving styles, and the various challenges brought by hybrid and electric vehicles, including range anxiety, workload and distraction, complexity, and novelty. This is followed by a discussion on the potential applicability of a particular design framework, namely Ecological Interface Design, to the design of in-vehicle interfaces that encourage energy-conserving driving behaviours whilst minimising distraction and workload, thus ensuring safety

Regulating Child Sex Robots: Restriction or Experimentation?

In July 2014, the roboticist Ronald Arkin suggested that child sex robots could be used to treat those with paedophilic predilections in the same way that methadone is used to treat heroin addicts. Taking this onboard, it would seem that there is reason to experiment with the regulation of this technology. But most people seem to disagree with this idea, with legal authorities in both the UK and US taking steps to outlaw such devices. In this paper, I subject these different regulatory attitudes to critical scrutiny. In doing so, I make three main contributions to the debate. First, I present a framework for thinking about the regulatory options that we confront when dealing with child sex robots. Second, I argue that there is a prima facie case for restrictive regulation, but that this is contingent on whether Arkin’s hypothesis has a reasonable prospect of being successfully tested. Third, I argue that Arkin’s hypothesis probably does not have a reasonable prospect of being successfully tested. Consequently, we should proceed with utmost caution when it comes to this technology

Framing descriptive norms as self-benefit versus environmental benefit : self-construal’s moderating impact in promoting smart energy devices

Recently, awareness has been raised concerning the importance of sustainable energy use. Nevertheless, many obstacles must be overcome to change individuals’ energy consumption habits. This study examines how a message should be framed to convince individuals to purchase a smart energy device that provides feedback on household energy use. As such, this device can assist households in adjusting their energy-wasting habits. Through two experimental studies, this paper examines how a descriptive normative message, indicating that the majority of US households have already purchased a smart energy device, can increase individuals’ intention to purchase the device. Both studies consider the moderating influence of the self-construal, which refers to individuals’ consideration of themselves as either part of a group (interdependent self-construal) or independent from others (independent self-construal). The first study (n = 231) reveals that a descriptive norm (versus no norm) leads to a higher purchase intention through an enhanced normative influence regardless of participants’ self-construal. The second study (n = 128) adds to the finding that combining a descriptive norm with a self-benefit (versus environmental) frame more strongly impacts the purchase intent of individuals with a dominant independence. No significant differences are identified between the two benefit frames’ effectiveness among individuals with a dominant interdependence