Could User-Generated Content be effective in reducing excessive consumption?
Supervisor
Atar Herziger, University of Cologne – Germany
Contact: herziger[at]wiso.uni-koeln.de
Team
Communications Officer, Webmaster & Field Lead: Kamilla Knutsen Steinnes
Contact: kamilla-knutsen.steinnes[at]sifo.hioa.no
Project Manager & Appmaster: Felicia Sundström
Contact: felicia.sundstrom[at]psyk.uu.se
Lead Analyst: Jana Berkessel
Contact: berkessj[at]uni-koeln.de
Dissemination Lead: Matija Franklin
Contact: mf548[at]cam.ac.uk
Contact
consumption.jrp[at]gmail.com
Introduction
Excessive consumption is on the rise, which heavily impacts financial, ecological and social aspects of life. A new social media trend on YouTube promotes consumer Minimalism, also known as voluntary simplicity—a lifestyle choice of reduced consumption and sustainable consumer behavior. However, voluntary simplicity is unpopular and difficult to adopt. The proposed research project will test a method of promoting voluntary simplicity via YouTube Minimalism user-generated content. This intervention will test different values and goals as motivators of voluntary simplicity. The intervention will be presented on a mobile application specifically developed for this study. The project is expected to contribute to the limited literature on voluntary simplicity, online behavioral change interventions, and the use of social marketing principles in consumer interventions.
App development
A mobile application has been developed in-house in collaboration with an external software developer. It is being developed as a cross-platform application with Apache Cordova and Framework7 using HTML, CSS and JavaScript as languages. The app will be made available for download on both Android and iPhone.
Project Progression
- July 2016: Project kickoff at jSchool in Slovenia
- November 2016: Study Protocol submission to Frontiers in Psychology
- February 2017: Beginning of stimuli creation
- March 2017: Ethical approval received from Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee
- March 2017: Study stimuli finalized
- April 2017: App emulator live
- April 2017: Questionnaire design completed
- May 24th 2017: Study preregistered at the Open Science Framework (archive reference: c7605/osf.io/cnmsw)
- May 26th 2017: Study Protocol accepted
- June 1st 2017: Start of participant recruitment
- June 9th 2017: Study Protocol published
- August 2017: Preliminary data presented at the Junior Researcher Programme Conference at the University of Cambridge, UK
- September 2017: Preliminary data presented through a poster at the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP) 2017 in Rishon LeZion, Israel
- October 30th 2017: The lottery prize of 100 Euro for participants completing the full experimental intervention was raffled and the randomly selected winner was awarded their prize.
- November 7th 2017: End of recruitment
- November 21st 2017: First draft of manuscript completed
Should you be interested in gaining access to any of these materials, you are welcome to contact us via email.
For more information about our intervention study, please visit our study website.