Computer scientist Gözel Shakeri wants to make online food shopping more sustainable. The university is funding her research with an Ossietzky Fellowship.
Shebuys clothes and furniture second-hand, eats almost exclusively vegan and usually travels by train: sustainability plays a major role in the life of computer scientist Dr Gözel Shakeri. In her research, too: "My goal is to make online shopping more sustainable," she reports. During her time as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, she began developing a browser extension for the website of a British supermarket chain. Her open source software Envirofy is designed to encourage
to shop for food more sustainably. The first version, which shows how
sustainable products are, was already a success: "In an experimental study, I found that
reduced the carbon footprint per purchase by 14 per cent for the test subjects," she explains.
In 2021, Shakeri moved to the University of Oldenburg to join the working groupof media computer scientist Prof Dr Susanne Boll. In March, she was awarded a "Carl von Ossietzky Young Researchers' Fellowship". The university's own programme supports highly qualified researchers at the start of their careers. In her project DioniSOS (Digital Behaviour Interventions for Sustainable Online Shopping), Shakeri will spend the next three years investigating the effect of digital behavioural interventions on the ecological footprint of food purchases.
Her specialism is human-machine interactions, i.e. the collaboration between humans and computers and other automated systems. "The great thing about Computing Science is that it allows me to realise things that are really important to me," she says. The scientist specialises in sustainable human-machine interactions, a relatively new field of research.
The idea of using her expertise to makeonline shoppingmore sustainablecame to her in 2020 during the pandemic. In the UK, where she was still living at the time, ten per cent of food is bought online, and more and more food is also being sold online in Germany. The potential for CO₂ savings is huge: according to a study by the United Nations, the entire food sector is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. "Consumer behaviour can reduce the environmental impact of consumption more quickly than a long-term system change to more sustainable production methods," Shakeri is convinced, citing a 2018 study that found that emissions from the food sector can be halved through comparatively simple changes - such as switching to a regional, predominantly plant-based diet.
Sustainable shopping should be fun
However, various barriersstand in the way ofthis, reports Shakeri: studies have shown that many users would like to buy environmentally friendly products, but often don't know what they are. Another problem: "Many associate sustainability with sacrifice and not with enjoyment."
The first version of her browser extension helps with the first point in particular: the software shows how sustainable different products are, for example by means of traffic light colours or by sorting products according to the CO₂ emissions they cause. Envirofy takes various sustainability dimensions into account, including greenhouse gas emissions, the environmental impact of cultivation and transport and social standards. The underlying information comes from publicly accessible, peer-reviewed databases.
In her new project, the computer scientist nowwants to investigatefurther digital behavioural interventions. To this end, she is developing a recommendation system that offers more sustainable alternatives to the products selected by customers during online shopping. The system is intended to give consumers the opportunity to get creative - for example, to post recommendations or background information on certain products, upload films or GIFs. "Ideally, this creates a sense of community that ultimately favours more sustainable shopping," she explains.
The researcher's plan is to design the new user interface and programme the necessary extensionstogetherwith her team before the end of this year. Experimental studies will then start at the beginning of next year. With several hundred test subjects, she wants to investigate which interventions are most effective and at which point in the purchasing process they should be used. Her goal is to lay the foundation for an application for a third-party-funded junior research group.
After a somewhat bumpy start during thepandemic, she hasnow settled in wellin Oldenburg. "I love the cycling culture," says the researcher, who comes from Frankfurt, which is not very bike-friendly. She rarely visits an online shop to buy groceries - preferring instead to go to one of Oldenburg's weekly markets.
This article was first published in the July issue of the university newspaper UNI INFO was first published.
