Using personas to exploit environmental attitudes and behaviour in sustainable product design

The aim of this research was to study the relationship between user sustainable design attitudes versus behaviour, and to develop and test environmental personas as design tools. Current approaches towards environmentally sustainable design are primarily focused on capturing the environmentally conscious and pro-environmental consumers, or changing the attitude and behaviour of the anti-environmental consumer. In a survey of 521 consumers, environmental attitude was a poor predictor of environmental behaviour. A series of interviews was performed with different profiles of environmentally orientated users to assess their environmental attitudes and behaviour. The survey and interview data were used to develop four personas, one for each of the environmental attitude and behaviour types based on data from the consumer survey. A case study performed with university design students found that concepts generated by groups using environmentally orientated personas scored higher on environmental sustainability versus those generated by groups using an image board. This study illustrates how user-centred design approaches could be used to embed sustainable design in products by exploiting consumer environmental behaviour to overcome different attitudes and behaviour.