A Systematic Literature Review on Equity and Technology in HCI and Fairness: Navigating the Complexities and Nuances of Equity Research

TL;DR

This study conducts a comprehensive systematic literature review of 202 papers across HCI and fairness-focused venues to map how equity is defined, framed, and integrated into technology. It identifies a scarcity of explicit equity definitions, reveals three core definitions (need-based, contribution-based, equality-based), and shows a split in methodological approaches between HCI (qualitative emphasis) and fairness venues (quantitative/theoretical emphasis). The authors propose an equity framework with four dimensions—what shapes equity research, why study equity, how to conduct it, and tensions/trade-offs—along with seven recommendations to improve clarity, collaboration, and value transparency. The work highlights tensions between equity and other values, warns against techno-solutionism, and emphasizes stakeholder participation while acknowledging potential inequities within participatory processes. Overall, it provides a foundation for guiding future, more explicit, and ethically nuanced equity research in technology.

Abstract

Equity is crucial to the ethical implications in technology development. However, implementing equity in practice comes with complexities and nuances. In response, the research community, especially the human-computer interaction (HCI) and Fairness community, has endeavored to integrate equity into technology design, addressing issues of societal inequities. With such increasing efforts, it is yet unclear why and how researchers discuss equity and its integration into technology, what research has been conducted, and what gaps need to be addressed. We conducted a systematic literature review on equity and technology, collecting and analyzing 202 papers published in HCI and Fairness-focused venues. Amidst the substantial growth of relevant publications within the past four years, we deliver three main contributions: (1) we elaborate a comprehensive understanding researchers' motivations for studying equity and technology, (2) we illustrate the different equity definitions and frameworks utilized to discuss equity, (3) we characterize the key themes addressing interventions as well as tensions and trade-offs when advancing and integrating equity to technology. Based on our findings, we elaborate an equity framework for researchers who seek to address existing gaps and advance equity in technology.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) workflow.
• Figure 2: Publication counts in HCI and Fairness community. Our corpus includes papers up to September 2023, but we excluded papers published in 2023 in this figure since all the publications that were to be published in 2023 were not available. There are no data points earlier than 2020 as FAccT joined ACM in 2019 and AIES started publishing papers in 2018. No papers were found prior to 2008 in our corpus.
• Figure 3: Methods distribution for HCI and Fairness papers. We counted the methods used for each paper. Papers that use multiple methods are counted more than once.
• Figure 4: A Framework for future researchers aiming to study the intersection of equity and technology. This framework illustrates the key dimensions for researchers conducting research in equity and technology. In addition to the key dimensions, we elaborate guidelines and recommendations for researchers to reflect and consider.