Tian Xiao (FOS), Hew Li Yang (FOS), Liu Xinran (FOS), Ong Weng Qi (FOS), Wayne Gareth Koh (FOS)
Academic Advisor: Dr. Chua Siew Chin
Our choice of food has a significant impact on the environment, especially in terms of the greenhouse gases emitted during production. However, our preliminary survey results showed that NUS students do not practice sustainable eating habits. Inspiration for our project was drawn from Duolingo’s leaderboard system as a form of motivation for increased performance. Therefore, we conducted a two-week observational study with a tracker and leaderboard system, to examine whether such a method of positive persuasion would encourage students to eat more sustainably. A scoring system was also designed to quantify the sustainability of common food ingredients. We updated participants daily on their scores for the day, to enable them to track their progress over the course of data collection. Our results concluded that the leaderboard system was successful in influencing more environmentally sustainable eating habits.