It is only for your own good, or is it? Ethical Considerations for Designing Ethically Conscious Persuasive Information Systems

Persuasive designs, including gamification and digital nudging, have become well renowned during the last years and have been implemented successfully across different sectors including education, e-health, e-governance, e-finance and general information systems. In this regard, persuasive design can support desirable changes in attitude and behavior of users in order to achieve their own goals. However, such persuasive influence on individuals raises ethical questions as persuasive designs can impair the autonomy of users or persuade the user towards goals of a third party and hence lead to unethical decision-making processes. In human-computer interaction this is especially significant with the advent of advanced artificial intelligence that can emulate human behavior and thus bring new dynamics into play. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature analysis with the goal to compile an overview of ethical considerations for persuasive system design, derive potential guidelines for ethical persuasive designs and shed light on potential research gaps.