OceanChat: The Effect of Virtual Conversational AI Agents on Sustainable Attitude and Behavior Change

Marine ecosystems face unprecedented threats from climate change and plastic pollution, yet traditional environmental education often struggles to translate awareness into meaningful actions. This paper presents OceanChat, an interactive system leveraging large language models to create conversational AI agents represented as animated marine creatures, specifically a beluga whale, a jellyfish, and a seahorse, designed to promote pro-environmental behavior (PEB) and foster awareness through personalized dialogue. Through a between-subjects experiment (N=900), we compared three conditions: static scientific information, static character narratives, and interactive dialogue with AI-powered marine characters. Our analysis revealed that the Conversational Character Narrative condition significantly increased behavioral intentions and sustainable choice preferences compared to static approaches. The beluga whale character demonstrated consistently stronger emotional engagement across multiple measures, including perceived anthropomorphism and empathy. Our work extends research on sustainability interfaces facilitating PEB and offers design principles for creating emotionally resonant, intelligent AI characters.