Institut für Marketing & Management

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Browsing Institut für Marketing & Management by Person "Berger, Michelle"

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    Sustainable interaction with digital technologies : fostering pro-environmental behavior and maintaining mental health
    (2023) Berger, Michelle; Gimpel, Henner
    One of the most essential challenges of the twenty-first century is to realize sustainability in everyday behavior. Daily, partly unconscious decisions influence environmental sustainability. Such everyday choices are increasingly shifted toward digital environments, as digital technologies are ubiquitous in a wide variety of everyday contexts. This yields the great potential to positively influence the users’ behavior toward more environmental sustainability when interacting with digital technologies, for example, through the use of digital nudging. But besides these benefits, research indicates that interacting with digital technologies can lead to a specific form of stress, also known as technostress, that can cause adverse health outcomes. Individuals increasingly suffer from – or are at risk of – mental health issues like depression or burnout. This demonstrates that it is essential to ensure a sustainable interaction with digital technologies that is both environmentally friendly and healthy, especially for the mind. Addressing individuals’ interaction with digital technologies requires a broad understanding from all perspectives. The Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) framework represents a guiding structure for studying the interaction of humans with digital technologies. Along with the guiding structure of the HCI framework, the seven research articles included in this dissertation aim to contribute to sustainable interaction with digital technologies. The focus is on two outcomes resulting from the interaction: First, fostering pro-environmental behavior and, second, maintaining mental health. After an introductory first chapter, Chapter 2 focuses on the outcome of fostering pro-environmental behavior when interacting with digital technologies using digital nudging. Chapter 2.1 contributes to a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of DNEs in different behavioral contexts (HCI perspective context) that influence the individuals’ pro-environmental behavior (e.g., e-commerce shopping behavior). Chapters 2.2 and 2.3 zoom in on two of the behavioral contexts described in Chapter 2.1 to investigate and test the design and effectiveness of specific DNEs in an e-commerce shop and a smart home app (HCI perspective technology) through online experiments. While prior research concentrated on the effectiveness of different “feedback nudge features” (FNFs) (e.g., different update frequencies), Chapter 2.4 investigates the influence of 25 identified FNFs on user satisfaction in a smart home app through a card sorting approach followed by an online survey based on the Kano model (HCI perspective human). Chapter 3 puts focuses on the outcome of maintaining mental health when interacting with digital technologies, thus avoiding technostress. Chapter 3.1 concentrates on the role of the organization in preventing technostress among their employees (HCI perspective context). It introduces and characterizes 24 primary and secondary technostress prevention measures and determines the relevance of primary prevention measures in reducing different sources of technostress (technostress creators). Out of the 24 technostress prevention measures, two specific measures (“adopt a stress-sensitive digital workplace design” and “use gamification”) are addressed in Chapters 3.2 and 3.3. Through a large-scale online survey, Chapter 3.2 derives an understanding of the characteristic profiles of technologies used at the digital workplace, their interplay, and how they influence technostress (HCI perspective technology). Chapter 3.3 focuses on the individual’s appraisal (HCI perspective human) of a demanding situation when interacting with digital technologies. After conducting an online experiment, Chapter 3.3 finds that the integration of gamification elements (e.g., points or levels) in digital technologies can reduce the individual’s threat appraisal. Lastly, Chapter 4 discusses the results of the seven included research articles and provides an outlook for future research. In summary, this dissertation aims to provide research and practice with new insights into creating a sustainable interaction with digital technologies to foster pro-environmental behavior and maintain mental health.