EnviRobots: How Human–Robot Interaction Can Facilitate Sustainable Behavior

Clara Scheutz, Theresa Law and Matthias Scheutz
Additional contact information
Clara Scheutz: Human–Robot Interaction Laboratory, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Theresa Law: Human–Robot Interaction Laboratory, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Matthias Scheutz: Human–Robot Interaction Laboratory, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-15

Abstract: Environmental psychology aims to study human behavior with regard to the environment and how psychological techniques can be used to motivate behavior change. We argue that these concepts can be applied to interactive robots designed for other tasks, which then enables them to encourage sustainability behaviors in humans. We first present a literature review on the current state of social robots that are used to encourage sustainable behaviors. We next present eight hypothetical scenarios which are informed by the progress that has already been made in social robots in sustainability, as well as notable gaps where further environmental psychological concepts could be utilized. These scenarios encompass possible robots that range from limited sensing and no manipulation capabilities, to more sophisticated sensing and no manipulation, to sophisticated sensing and manipulation capabilities. We present these scenarios in which human–robot interaction could potentially result in pro-environmental behavioral changes in humans as recommendations for robot designers interested in helping design social robots for sustainability.

Keywords: human–robot interaction; ecological psychology; sustainability robots (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12283/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12283/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:21:p:12283-:d:673888

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().