### Ethics and Consent

**Document Status:** Version 1.0 

**Date:** July 2026

**Study:** Longitudinal Analysis of Sustainable Behavioral Habits (The Ecohance Panel) 

**Please read the following information carefully before agreeing to participate in this study.**

**1\. Purpose of the Study:** You are invited to participate in a behavioral science study investigating how sustainable habits develop, persist, and change over time. This research aims to understand how individuals develop, maintain, or change sustainable behaviors over time and how environmental intentions relate to everyday actions. 

**2\. Eligibility:** Participation is limited to individuals who are at least 15 years of age.

**3\. Estimated Time Commitment:** Total participation across all five survey waves is approximately 4–5 minutes over 5 weeks.

**4\. What You Will Do** If you agree to participate, you will receive a notification every 14 days for a period of 10 weeks. You will be asked to complete a brief 5-question visual survey regarding your daily sustainability choices. Each wave will take approximately 45 seconds to complete.

**5\. Risks and Discomforts:** This study involves minimal risk. Some participants may experience minor inconvenience from receiving periodic survey reminders or reflecting on their daily habits. No physical, psychological, or medical interventions are involved.

**6\. Benefits:** You may gain insight into your own sustainability habits through participation and a chance to be part of an actual research paper (acknowledgment) for your contribution on completing all 5 waves. While there may be no direct personal financial benefit, your responses will contribute to research on sustainable decision-making and the understanding of human behavior.

**7\. Compensation:** Participants will not receive financial compensation for participating.

**8\. Privacy, Confidentiality, and Storage** Personally identifiable information (such as your email address) will be stored securely and separately from survey responses, and will be used solely for authentication and study notifications. Research data will be stored using reputable, password-protected cloud storage and secured with access restricted to the Research Lead. If additional collaborators are added in the future, access will be limited only to individuals directly involved in the research. While reasonable security measures will be taken to protect your information, no electronic storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Published results and analytical datasets will contain data that has been anonymized and, where appropriate, reported only in aggregated form.

**9\. Data Retention and Future Use:** Anonymous research data may be retained indefinitely for academic research, replication, and open-science purposes. Because the data will be anonymized, the dataset will not contain information that can reasonably identify individual participants. Anonymized data may also be used in future research projects addressing similar scientific questions. Personally identifiable information used for authentication will be permanently deleted once the study has concluded or after it is no longer required for notification purposes.

**10\. Publication of Results:** Findings from this study may be presented in academic papers, reports, conferences, or on the Ecohance website. No personally identifiable information will be included in any publication.

**11\. Voluntary Participation and Withdrawal** Participation is entirely voluntary. You may stop participating at any time by discontinuing survey completion or by contacting the research team to request removal from future notifications. There will be no penalty for choosing not to participate or for withdrawing early. You may request withdrawal of your identifiable data at any time before your responses have been anonymized and incorporated into the research dataset. Once data have been irreversibly anonymized, it may no longer be possible to identify or remove individual responses.

**12\. Research Acknowledgment:** Participants who successfully complete all study waves may choose to have their names acknowledged as contributors in the final working paper and on the Ecohance Research Portal. Choosing not to be acknowledged will not affect your participation or the validity of your data.

**13\. Ethical Oversight** This study is an independent student-led research project and is not currently affiliated with or reviewed by a university Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Research Ethics Committee. The study has been designed to follow widely accepted ethical principles for voluntary participation, confidentiality, informed consent, and responsible data management.

**14\. International Participation** This study may be accessible to participants from multiple countries. By participating, you acknowledge that your data may be processed and stored in accordance with the policies described in this consent form.

**15\. Questions or Concerns** If you have questions regarding this study, your rights as a participant, or wish to withdraw your data, you may contact:

* **Research Lead:** Krishnika Saxena  
* **Email:** [Ecohanceofficial@gmail.com](mailto:Ecohanceofficial@gmail.com) 

**Consent Statement:** By checking the box below, I confirm that I am 15 years of age or older, I have read and understood the information provided above, and I voluntarily consent to participate in this research study.

**\[ \] I have read and understood the information above and voluntarily agree to participate in this research study.**