Hitting the Triple Bottom Line: Widening the HCI Approach to Sustainability

Title of the Paper

Hitting the Triple Bottom Line: Widening the HCI Approach to Sustainability

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction and Sustainability
• Keywords: Sustainable HCI, Triple Bottom Line, Sustainability, Systematic Literature Review, Economies of Scale, Political Economy

Research Background and Problem Statement

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • There is an imbalance in the three dimensions of sustainability—environmental, social, and economic—with the economic dimension being neglected or significantly underrepresented in current Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research.
  • Existing sustainable HCI research primarily focuses on improving individual consumer behavior, without adequately addressing the importance of potential changes in economic and political structures.
  • The foundations of the current economic model (e.g., capitalist growth economy) conflict with sustainable environmental and social goals, yet systematic solutions to these issues are lacking.

• Significance:

  • Environmental crises and social inequalities are closely tied to current economic structures, making the redesign of economic systems crucial for achieving long-term sustainability.
  • As digital technologies increasingly shape economic scales, HCI can play a pivotal role in driving reforms in economic and social structures.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • The authors were inspired by the sustainable development goals proposed in the Brundtland Report and the influence of the "Triple Bottom Line (TBL)" framework.
  • A systematic review of existing literature revealed that research predominantly focuses on environmental and social dimensions, with limited attention to the economic dimension, and is often confined to individual perspectives.

Proposed Solution

• Methods or Solutions:

  • Propose an extended TBL framework to explore how HCI can address economic issues in sustainability through a political economy perspective.
  • Develop three fundamental perspectives on economic activities—production, consumption, and exchange—emphasizing the design of multi-level (first-order, second-order, third-order) implicit interactions.
  • Drawing on heterodox economics, the authors propose incorporating natural elements and non-human factors into economic design to foster interactions that are socially just and environmentally sustainable.

• Innovative Contributions:

  • The authors explicitly incorporate the traditionally overlooked economic dimension into the sustainable HCI framework and introduce novel ideas for rethinking the capitalist economic system through heterodox economics.
  • They propose a systematic approach that extends technological design to include non-human and natural environments, enabling HCI to create comprehensive, long-term sustainable solutions.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  • Systematic literature review: Following the PRISMA framework, 77 relevant studies were included.
  • Analyze how the articles address the three dimensions of the TBL (environmental, social, economic) and summarize research trends.
  • Propose and validate a theoretical model for the extended TBL framework, with validation through multiple case studies, such as Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) and the implicit interaction impacts of cryptocurrencies.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • The literature review revealed a significant lack of focus on the economic dimension in current HCI research, with only 4 articles (5% of the total) centering on economic issues.
  • A novel framework of three-order implicit interactions (first-order, second-order, third-order) was proposed to comprehensively evaluate the impacts of technology on the environment, society, and economy.

• Advantages:

  • Provides an alternative pathway beyond the traditional capitalist economic system, emphasizing the design of economic systems to drive sustainable solutions.
  • The systematic model explores the potential of digital technologies as new variables in economic design, enabling HCI research to more effectively address large-scale social and environmental challenges.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • The literature analysis clearly revealed the research bias within the HCI community (focus on environmental and social dimensions), highlighting the vast research opportunities and practical potential of the economic dimension.
  • Case studies on CSA and cryptocurrencies further validated the practical applicability of the extended framework.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations: Due to the temporal scope of the study, some cutting-edge economic-related research may not have been included. Additionally, discussions on various economic theories remain to be deepened.
  • Future Directions: The authors suggest that HCI should strengthen its dialogue with the field of economics, particularly in heterodox economics, feminist economics, and ecological economics. They propose exploring how digital technologies can be leveraged to achieve equity and sustainability in complex economic networks.