Mobile apps are ubiquitous, affecting our everyday practices because “there is always an app for that”. In this vein, there have been a significant number of apps devised to support people’s lifestyles to make them more sustainable. This study aims to draw an overview of gamified mobile apps for sustainable consumption. Following a systematic process, this study analyzes 67 gamified apps’ sustainability approaches and gamification concepts. It was found that (1) sustainable consumption is generally presented as the efficient use of resources to impact the environment positively, rarely addressing societal impacts or economic gains from shifting consumption practices. Other findings include (2) a lack of diversity in gamification characteristics, given the prevalence of direct communication with the user, the absence of virtual identities, and most apps targeting behavior change without attitude change. A potentially problematic design choice is (3) the presence, in some cases, of external rewards that are often contradictory to the message of sustainable consumption as they lead to more consumption. Nonetheless, based on most apps embedding sustainable consumption activities in the gamification concept and having a large number of users, it is possible to conclude that gamification has the potential to motivate shifts in their users’ lifestyles.@en

Considering how wicked problems, such as overconsumption, climate change, or the management of the COVID-19 pandemic rely on multiple stakeholder groups’ deliberation, this study investigates gamification's potential in participatory backcasting processes to support the emergence and growth of social innovations towards sustainability. Gameful methodologies have progressively been introduced into strategic planning processes, futures research, and transition studies, offering a powerful input to participatory backcasting processes. As gamification is a novel and impactful way to motivate and engage participants to take action during and after the participatory process, this study develops a framework for practitioners to gamify backcasting processes. Developed through state-of-the-art review of extant corpus as well as two cases of gamified participatory backcasting, the framework elucidates how participatory backcasting processes that include gamification elements designed to address engagement do have an impact on the participants, particularly in terms of the process being a positive, co-creative experience, and offer a good foundation for posterior actions.

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