Abstract
The accelerating depletion of natural resources has necessitated the design of environmentally sustainable engineering solutions. To meet this need for sustainable solutions, designers must actively incorporate considerations of environmental impact in their design decisions. Prior research suggests that the effects of climate change are often perceived to be psychologically distant, and this distance could inhibit individuals from actively engaging in environmentally sustainable behavior. Little research has investigated the impact of problem framing based on designers’ psychological distance on design performance. Furthermore, research suggests that empathy development could be an effective mechanism for bridging psychological distance. However, little research has assessed the utility of empathy-invoking problem framing in sustainable engineering design practice and education. Our aim in this study is to explore this research gap by comparing student designers’ perceptions of different problem formulations. Specifically, we tested the effects of variations in (1) the socio-spatial context and (2) the empathy focus of a similar design problem. The effects of these variations on the perceived psychological distance and empathy-invoking nature were tested through a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment. From the results, we see that the variations in the problem formulation did not relate to either the perceived psychological distance or the perceived empathy-invoking nature. These findings suggest that issues related to environmental sustainability tend to be perceived similarly, despite differences in their socio-spatial context and empathy-invoking nature.
