Abstract
The Journey from Consumer to Investor: Designing a Financial AI Companion for Young Adults to Help With Sustainable Shopping, Saving, and Investing
Taiwanese young adults, college students in particular, are concerned with environmental issues, yet they are hindered by lack of simple tools to affect systemic change. Meanwhile, strengthening environmental policy from the European Union includes the concept of digital product passports, which aims to help distinguish eco-designed products made by circular economy companies striving to be zero-waste from companies that simply engage in greenwashing. Tracking product data from the source materials, until the consumer purchase decision, and finally post-purchase recycling, facilitates building transparency into opaque global supply chains. Data-driven interaction design, large-language models, and artificial intelligence assistants translate complex environmental data into human-comprehensible language.
The emerging field of planetary health recognizes profound interconnections between our economic behaviors, ecosystem services such as clean water, air, soil, the climate crisis, and human health. As of 2024, Earth’s natural environment is being heavily degraded by the extractive business practices of companies that make many of the products and services we buy every day. The way we use our money to interact with companies - through shopping as consumers and saving / investing as investors - has an effect on the life-supporting biosphere we rely on to keep our planet inhabitable. In essence, from an ecological perspective, every financial action is either an investment decision to support more environmentally-friendly companies - or to support polluters. By democratizing financial markets, young adults can gain greater access and influence over where their money goes, enabling them to support sustainable and environmentally responsible companies.
My research addresses the need for tools to make sustainable financial action more convenient, focusing in particular on college students. I leverage design research to find design concepts for simple AI-based user interfaces - also known as generative UIs - to help young adults participate in sustainable financial activism. A survey of 700 students across 10 universities in Taiwan was conducted, enhanced by 5 expert interviews providing industry insights. The major contribution of the study is an interactive AI-assistant prototype.
Keywords: Climate Anxiety, Planetary Health, Human-AI Interaction, Digital Sustainability, Financial Activism, Transparency