Sustainable software development involves creating software in a manner that meets present goals without undermining our ability to meet future goals. In a software engineering context, sustainability has at least four dimensions: ecological, economic, social, and technical. No interventions for improving social sustainability in software engineering have been tested in rigorous lab-based experiments, and little evidence-based guidance is available. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two interventions-stakeholder maps and persona models-for improving social sustainability through software feature prioritization. We conducted a randomized controlled factorial experiment with 79 undergraduate computer science students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups and asked to prioritize a backlog of prosocial, neutral, and antisocial user stories for a shopping mall's digital screen display and facial recognition software. Participants received either persona models, a stakeholder map, both, or neither. We compared the differences in prioritization levels assigned to prosocial and antisocial user stories using Cumulative Link Mixed Model regression. Participants who received persona models gave significantly lower priorities to antisocial user stories but no significant difference was evident for prosocial user stories. The effects of the stakeholder map were not significant. The interaction effects were not significant. Providing aspiring software professionals with well-crafted persona models causes them to de-prioritize antisocial software features. The impact of persona modelling on sustainable software development therefore warrants further study with more experience professionals. Moreover, the novel methodological strategy of assessing social sustainability behavior through backlog prioritization appears feasible in lab-based settings.

翻译：可持续软件开发是指以既满足当前目标又不损害未来目标实现能力的方式创建软件。在软件工程语境中，可持续性至少包含四个维度：生态、经济、社会与技术。目前尚未有在严格实验室实验中验证过的提升软件工程社会可持续性的干预措施，也缺乏基于实证的指导。本研究旨在评估两种干预措施——利益相关者地图和用户画像模型——通过软件功能优先级排序提升社会可持续性的有效性。我们开展了一项包含79名计算机科学本科生的随机对照析因实验。参与者被随机分配至四组中的一组，并被要求为购物中心的数字屏幕显示与人脸识别软件，对包含亲社会、中立及反社会用户故事的需求待办列表进行优先级排序。参与者分别获得了用户画像模型、利益相关者地图、两者兼具或两者皆无。我们采用累积链接混合模型回归比较了亲社会与反社会用户故事所获优先级评分的差异。获得用户画像模型的参与者对反社会用户故事给出了显著更低的优先级，但对亲社会用户故事未表现出显著差异。利益相关者地图的影响不显著。交互效应亦不显著。为有抱负的软件专业人员提供精心设计的用户画像模型，能促使其降低反社会软件功能的优先级。因此，用户画像建模对可持续软件开发的影响值得在更具经验的从业者中开展进一步研究。此外，通过待办列表优先级排序评估社会可持续性行为的新方法策略，在实验室环境中显示出可行性。