Persuasive Data Visualization and Interactive Narrative for Climate Change Awareness

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects every living being on our planet. We have been observing drastic changes to our climate since the last few decades. This has raised concerns among people from all works of life to address this issue which requires collective effort in mitigating the threats. Climate researchers have emphasized the human involvement in the acceleration of climate change, especially due to the drastic increase in warming trend since the industrial revolution. There are numerous climate actions that each individual performs in their day-to-day lives, and these actions collectively impact the climate in the short and long run. Raising awareness among people about climate change and helping them realize the consequences of their actions is key to mitigating climate change problems. Our research aimed to achieve this by building a persuasive intervention that combines visualization of climate change data and an interactive narrative that demonstrates how our actions can impact the climate. We conducted a user study with 100 participants and found evidence showing that our system was effective in significantly promoting behavior change to mitigate climate change. We found defensive responses as a key factor that is negatively influencing the effect of our intervention on the participants. Compelling visuals and multiple interaction options, simulating climate actions and their consequences, and reducing the effort to learn about the phenomenon were significant positive techniques used in the intervention. Additionally, the social elements of our intervention played a major role in promoting participants' willingness to perform pro-environmental behavior. Participants were able to learn from and compare their behavior with other participants, and they were also able to contribute together to fight this collective-problem, which contributed to the effectiveness of the intervention. Our work contributes to the field of persuasive technology, data visualization, interactive narratives and climate research by introducing a new persuasive way of communicating climate change information to the general public using a combination of data visualizations and interactive narratives.