A Study on the Factors Influencing the Usage of Environmentally Friendly Products

Designing engineering systems to minimize their environmental impact is a very complex task. Little exists to guide designers in developing products that are integrated into users’ lives thus reducing the overall environmental impact at the system level. A better understanding of user behavior will allow this knowledge to be better integrated into more complex, system level models. As an initial step, this paper seeks an experimental framework to identify important parameters to be measured. For many products, the use stage is where most environmental damage occurs. The factors that may influence or obstruct a person to behave in a proenvironmental way are complicated. It is critical to train our future designers on those factors to reduce environmental impact caused by engineered systems. This paper reports an experiment that tests alternative products to disposable plastic water bottles to answer several eco-friendly design questions. The experiment determines whether certain eco-friendly products are more successful than others are and why this may be the case. This research includes the testing of four different products. Student participants receive one product each to use for a one-week testing period and then return to complete two questionnaires. Surveys measure the success of the product and the level of environmental consciousness through various scales. With the understanding of various factors influencing the market success of environmentally friendly products, a set of guidelines for the design of such products can be developed.