Whale You Go Green? Immediate and Longitudinal Effects of Embodied Conversational AI Avatars on Sustainable Behavioral Tendencies and Pro-Environmental Attitudes

arXiv:2610.33191v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Embodied conversational AI can be persuasive, but can it motivate people to develop sustainable behavioral tendencies and increase pro-environmental attitudes? We conducted a randomized experiment (N = 576) comparing four embodied avatars--a beluga whale, Greta Thunberg, Emma Watson, and a generic human--with a text chatbot and no-intervention control. All embodied conditions increased immediate sustainable product selection relative to the control (beta = .401-.609, all q