Ethics in Persuasive Technologies: A Systematic Literature Review
Parinda Rahman, Ifeoma Adaji · 2024
Persuasive technologies, which are intended to change users' attitudes or behaviors and encourage specific actions, are widely applied across various domains.However, the fine line between persuasion and coercion raises significant ethical concerns, which current literature only superficially addresses.This paper aims to deepen the understanding of factors influencing the ethical perception of persuasive technologies through a systematic literature review of 17 journal articles.The selected studies were analyzed using content analysis to identify key ethical factors.The findings indicate that factors such as autonomy, consent, data privacy, transparency, and addictive design strategies significantly influence users' ethical perceptions across multiple application domains.Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies or AI agents, particularly applications like argumentative chatbots and storytelling robots, exhibit the highest number of ethical considerations.The study also notes thematic overlaps among many ethical factors, with the context and use case impacting ethical perceptions.Based on these results, this paper offers design recommendations and suggestions for the design of ethical persuasive technology applications.