Eco-Bee: A Personalised Multi-Modal Agent for Advancing Student Climate Awareness and Sustainable Behaviour in Campus Ecosystems
This addresses the problem of limited behavioral change in campus sustainability efforts for students, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing technologies like LLMs and gamification.
The paper tackled the gap in digital sustainability initiatives at universities by proposing Eco-Bee, a personalized multi-modal agent that integrates large language models and the Planetary Boundaries framework to advance student climate awareness and sustainable behavior, with a pilot test showing 96% of participants supported campus-wide rollout and reported clearer understanding of behavioral impacts.
Universities are microcosms of urban ecosystems, with concentrated consumption patterns in food, transport, energy, and product usage. These environments not only contribute substantially to sustainability pressures but also provide a unique opportunity to advance sustainability education and behavioural change at scale. As in most sectors, digital sustainability initiatives within universities remain narrowly focused on carbon calculations, typically providing static feedback that limits opportunities for sustained behavioural change. To address this gap, we propose Eco-Bee, integrating large language models, a translation of the Planetary Boundaries framework (as Eco-Score), and a conversational agent that connects individual choices to environmental limits. Tailored for students at the cusp of lifelong habits, Eco-Bee delivers actionable insights, peer benchmarking, and gamified challenges to sustain engagement and drive measurable progress toward boundary-aligned living. In a pilot tested across multiple campus networks (n=52), 96% of the student participants supported a campus-wide rollout and reported a clearer understanding of how daily behaviours collectively impact the planet's limits. By embedding planetary science, behavioural reinforcement, and AI-driven personalisation into a single platform, Eco-Bee establishes a scalable foundation for climate-conscious universities and future AI-mediated sustainability infrastructures.