Beyond "Vulnerable Populations": A Unified Understanding of Vulnerability From A Socio-Ecological Perspective

HCI and CSCW research has witnessed increasing efforts to address diversity and inclusion in research and design practice, as evidenced by the growing body of research with populations deemed as vulnerable, marginalized, or underserved. However, this work has been largely limited to a population-specific approach, i.e., identifying certain populations as vulnerable and gathering their individual experiences. Drawing primarily from human-centered security and privacy research, we identify three key challenges faced by this population-specific approach: (1) It is limited in addressing user diversity within the target population; (2) It may fail to capture the complex social reality of vulnerability; and (3) It runs the risk of perpetuating othering and stereotypes. To address these limitations, we propose a socio-ecological perspective on vulnerability adapted from the Ecological System Theory (EST). We argue that a socio-ecological perspective of vulnerability can guide researchers to look beyond static and stigmatizing definitions of vulnerability --- instead, focus on the situations, relations, and structures that lead to vulnerability, eventually enabling transferable knowledge of vulnerability across populations. We demonstrate how the socio-ecological lens maps onto existing work and generates new insights in the case of older adults' security and privacy, as well as its potential for being applied to other contexts such as reproductive privacy and responsible artificial intelligence. We end by providing concrete recommendations on how HCI and CSCW research can better operationalize vulnerability in scholarship and design practice.