Feeling the heat: investigating the influence of novice designers’ trait empathy, and their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards sustainability on their identification of problem requirements

Abstract:

As global resources deplete, there has emerged a need for designers to emphasize sustainability in engineering design. Several researchers have proposed design tools to support sustainable design; however, designers must be sufficiently motivated to actively adopt a sustainable design mindset and utilize these design tools. Prior research has identified the need for interpersonal skills (e.g., empathy, pro-environmental attitudes, and intentions) among individuals to encourage an active sustainable mindset. While researchers have demonstrated the relationship between designers’ empathy and their identification of problem requirements in design, little research has explored this relationship in the context of sustainable design. Moreover, little research has investigated this relationship with a focus on novice designers. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with 40 undergraduate engineering students. Specifically, we investigated the relationship between novice designers’ trait empathy, their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards environmental sustainability, and their identification of problem requirements. From the results, we see that participants’ empathic concern—a component of trait empathy—correlated positively with their attitudes and intentions towards sustainability. Additionally, participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards sustainability significantly pbkp_redicted their identification of environment-focused problem requirements, with their intentions towards sustainable action demonstrating the strongest positive relationship. Finally, we see that although components of participants’ trait empathy did not significantly pbkp_redict their identification of problem requirements, participants’ score on fantasy demonstrated the strongest positive relationship with the number of environment-focused requirements identified by them, a novel finding in this work. Taken together, these findings provide an important first step towards understanding the relationship between novice designers’ individual differences and their adoption of environment-focused sustainability in engineering design.

Año de publicación:

2023

Keywords:

• trait empathy
• Environmental sustainability
• Design education
• Problem requirements

Fuente:

scopus