Sustainability tips, eco-quiz or AI-powered chat? : exploring the perception of sustainable behavior change interventions on Ecosia using focus groups

User research shows that Ecosia users desire guidance on sustainable lifestyles when searching for information on the green search engine. However, it is important to better understand the sustainability information needs of different user groups to design compelling environmentally-related search engine features. Therefore, we conduct a qualitative study investigating how users perceive different behavior change interventions on Ecosia’s search engine. We use three interventions (sustainability tips, eco-quiz and AI-powered chat) and discuss prototypes with six online focus groups, each consisting of people from different sustainability-oriented backgrounds (‘environmental awareness types’). After performing content and sentiment analysis, the results show that the perception of the features as attractive or unattractive is contingent on the presentation of the feature as well as individual factors, such as environmental awareness. The sustainability tips have received a positive response from Ecosia users as well as Open-minded, Sceptics and Undecided user groups. The AI-powered chat evokes polarised discussions and is perceived as attractive by Open-minded, Consequentialist and Undecided users. Conversely, only Open-minded and Ecosia users found the eco-quiz attractive. The qualitative study underlines the importance of user segmentation and targeting to improve the effectiveness of behavior change interventions. The study suggests improving the tested prototypes on Ecosia and offers insights into the sustainability information needs of more sceptical and undecided user groups.