CALL FOR PAPERS

PT 2021: The 16th International Conference on PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGY 2021
[VIRTUAL] hosted by Bournemouth, United Kingdom, 12-14 April 2021
Conference Website:
https://persuasive2021.bournemouth.ac.uk/

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COVID-19 Note
PT2021 will be organised as a virtual event, registration fees will be significantly reduced. Fees will be mainly to cover proceedings, technical and organisational support, and online hosting. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings by Springer LNCS.
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In a world in which technology is increasingly present in people’s lives, and changing human behavior and attitudes is often the key to solving many societal and personal problems, studying how technology might be used to influence humans (in their behavior, attitudes and information processing), is paramount.
Persuasive technology is a vibrant interdisciplinary research field, focusing on the design, development and evaluation of technologies aimed at influencing people’s attitudes and/or behaviours through informed persuasion, but not through coercion or deception. The research community aims at enriching people’s lives in various domains such as health, sustainability, education and well-being, by supporting the setting and achieving of goals they set for themselves, and thus change their behaviours.

The 2021 conference will be hosted by Bournemouth University in the UK. The previous versions of conferences have been successfully organised in Aalborg (2020, online due to COVID-19), Limassol (2019), Waterloo (2018), Amsterdam (2017), Salzburg (2016), Chicago, Padua, Sydney, Linköping, Columbus, Copenhagen, Claremont, Oulu, and Stanford Eindhoven. The conference series seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners from industry and academia working with various topics of persuasive technology.

The authors of full and short papers need to specify the primary contribution type of the submitted manuscript in one of the following categories:
• Technical papers that introduce novel persuasive technology approaches and solutions alongside evidence of their potential
• Empirical studies which seek to provide evidence and explanation of methods, principles and theories in persuasive systems
• Conceptual-theoretical papers which primarily seek to contribute to the general understanding of the field’s core themes and specificities
• Other papers, e.g. literature reviews or experience reports.


SCOPE

The scope of the conference includes (but is not limited to) the following topics:
• Persuasive systems’ design
• Behaviour change support systems
• Interaction with persuasive systems, interfaces, visualisation
• Interactive agents in persuasive systems
• AI for persuasive technology
• Tailored, personalised and proactive persuasion
• Gamification for persuasion
• Evaluation and validation of persuasive applications
• Software architectures and technical infrastructures for persuasive systems
• Smart environments, e.g. IoT, and persuasion
• Digital Marketing, eCommerce, eTourism and SMART ecosystems
• Cognition, attention and persuasive technology
• Application domains for persuasive technologies such as safety, healthy living, sustainable behaviours, learning and training, marketing and commerce, work environments, organisations
• Positive technology
• Humanising and/or de-humanising effects of persuasive technology
• Values and ethics in persuasive technology
• Privacy, perceived security and trust in persuasive technology
• Resilience and counter-persuasion


SPECIAL TRACKS:


Important Note: all papers submitted to the special tracks shall also relate directly to the persuasive technology discipline.


***** PERSUASION AND EDUCATION track ****

This special track encourages contributions investigating persuasion in the field of education. The track has two strands:
– Educating persuasion and persuasive technology. We are interested in teaching and learning approaches as well as recommendation for curricula development around the topic. Contributions include but not limited to the content to teach (underpinnings, theories, models, approaches and case studies) and teaching and learning methods (delivery methods, assessment and feedback).
– Using persuasion and persuasive technology in education. Besides grasping and mastering skills and knowledge, we aim to foster the attitude, behaviour and confidence to practice and apply it. We are interested in the use of classic and novel approaches to motivating educators and learners, and this includes engagement and attendances, performance, personalised learning, creativity and exploration, peer support and mastering soft-skills.

**** PERSUASIVE AFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY track ****

This special track aims at bringing the related areas of Affective Computing and Persuasive Technology closer together and encourages submissions of research systems that use affect to persuade users in attitude or behaviour change. Persuasive Affective Technologies can be approached from two angles:
– Systems that detect and interpret human affect to help users archive their goals in persuasive systems.
– Systems that generate and display multimodal affect, for example with virtual agents or social robots, to scaffold interaction with persuasive systems.
This special track particularly welcomes papers from the category “technical papers”, but is not limited to it. Selected best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their contribution to a special issue or fast track for the renowned Journal IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (https://www.computer.org/product/journals/tac).

**** Digital Marketing, eCommerce, eTourism and SMART ecosystems track ****
This special track aims to bring all aspects of digital marketing and eCommerce including Search marketing, remarketing, eStrategy, eCommerce, eBranding, Social media marketing, organic and paid search [SEO/SEM/PPC], as well as data analytics & reporting including tracking, automation, personalization, segmentation, journeys.
The track will explore smart persuasive technologies and agility, developing real time solutions within the SMART ecosystem. It will explore persuasive applications and Internet of Things infrastructures towards revolutioning smart environments and ecosystems.
This special track particularly welcomes papers eTourism and eHospitality papers with clear link to persuasive technology. Selected best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their contribution to fast track for the most established tourism Journal Tourism Review https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/tr now in its 75th volume.

SUBMISSION TYPES

REGULAR PAPERS
This format is suitable for original research, which is completed work at the time of submission and, regardless of the length of the paper, is a self-sufficient scientific contribution. Papers can be full papers (12 pages, excluding references) or short papers (6 pages, excluding references) in Springer LNCS format, and describe work not presented, published or simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings and be devoted a timeslot for oral presentation.
Submitted papers must be classified by the authors as either technical, empirical, conceptual-theoretical or others for its main contribution, and will be reviewed in the light of this.

POSTERS
This format is suitable for descriptions of smaller studies, project outlines, or work-in-progress.
Authors should submit a 2-page abstract in Springer LNCS format. Accepted posters will be included in the adjunct conference proceedings (CEUR Workshop Proceedings). Posters will be displayed and presented during a dedicated session of the conference.

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM PAPERS
The Doctoral Consortium is a special session of the conference where PhD students can receive advice in a constructive atmosphere. Students present and discuss their research with other PhD students and a panel of established researchers in the area of persuasive technology. Students interested in participating in the Doctoral Consortium should submit a 4-page abstract in Springer LNCS format describing their research question, its position with respect to state of the art, their research plans and methodology, ideas, and results achieved so far. Accepted abstracts will be included in the adjunct conference proceedings (CEUR Workshop Proceedings) unless opted out by the student).

TECHNICAL DEMONSTRATIONS
If you want to demonstrate a piece of persuasive technology during the demo session so that attendees can try and interact with it, please submit a 2-page description in Springer LNCS format, including the description of the system and its purpose, its status of implementation and deployment, contents of the demo to be shown at the conference, and equipment. If you want to show a commercial product, then you might be asked to pay an exhibition fee. Accepted abstracts will be included in the adjunct conference proceedings (CEUR Workshop Proceedings).

WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIAL PROPOSALS:
Workshops are meant to gather a number of people to work interactively on an emerging topic and exchange ideas. Tutorials are intended to help people attending the conference organise a related scientific meeting on a specific topic or instruct on a specific practice. Approved workshops and tutorials will be announced on the conference website. Tutorials and workshops will take place during a half- or full-day session before the conference. If you want to organise a workshop, please submit a proposal as a maximum 4-page description in Springer LNCS format, including a description of the topic, motivation, organisation, expected outcome, and supporting materials. Workshop and tutorial descriptions will be included in the adjunct conference proceedings (CEUR Workshop Proceedings).


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
- Please consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines when preparing your paper.
- Make sure to use the Springer LNCS proceedings template, either for LaTeX or for Word, when preparing your paper.
- Remember the page limit for each type of submission
- Remember that your paper must be anonymised as we implement a double-blind review process. That means removing author names, emails and affiliations and avoiding any explicit reference to the authors' identity in the paper.
- We look forward to receiving your submission! Please use this link for your submission https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=persuasive2021


PUBLICATIONS
Accepted regular and special track papers (full and short) will be published by Springer in a volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (www.springer.com/lncs). Workshop and demo descriptions, abstracts from posters, and doctoral consortium abstracts will be published as an adjunct proceedings volume with an ISBN (CEUR Workshop Proceedings).

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IMPORTANT DATES
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Regular papers submissions:
Submission deadline: November 26, 2020
Decision notification: January 14, 2021
Final versions due: January 24, 2021
Workshop and tutorial proposals:
Submission deadline: December 07, 2020
Notification deadline: December 21, 2020
Poster, technical demonstration and doctoral consortium submission:
Submission deadline: February 07, 2021
Decision notification: February 25, 2021
Camera-ready: March 4, 2021

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ORGANISING COMMITTEE
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General Chair
- Fred Charles, Bournemouth University, UK
Program Chairs
- Raian Ali, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
- Birgit Lugrin – University of Wuerzburg, Germany
Doctoral Consortium Chairs
- Jaap Haam, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands
- Keith Phalp, Bournemouth University, UK
- Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Oulu University, Finland

Workshops and Tutorial Chairs
- Nilufar Baghaei, Massey University, New Zealand
- Charlie Hargood, Bournemouth University, UK
Technical Demonstration Chairs
- Christos Gatzidis, Bournemouth University, UK
Persuasion and Education Track
- Dena Al-Thani, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
- Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Oulu University, Finland
Persuasive Affective Technology Track
- Dirk Heylen, University of Twente, Netherlands
- Iolanda Leite, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden
Digital Marketing, eCommerce, eTourism and SMART ecosystems Track
- Dimitrios Buhalis, Bournemouth University, UK
- Ioannis Assiouras, ESDES, Lyon Catholic University, France
- Elvira Bolat, Bournemouth University, UK
Local Arrangement Chair
- Sarah Hodge, Bournemouth University, UK
- Dimitrios Buhalis, Bournemouth University, UK
Web, Publicity and Proceedings Chair
- Vedad Hulusic, Bournemouth University, UK