Game Design for a Sustainable Society

Abstract

Collective action is required to tackle urgent global challenges in energy and climate, biodiversity and food, and peace and security. The United Nations, therefore, adopted 17 global Sustainable Development Goals, to be met by 2030. Implementing these goals has proven to be no mean feat, but they are essential to establishing a sustainable society of ecological, social, and economic stability far into the future.

Psychological processes can provide insights into the dynamics of the complex problems that come with the current challenges. One key psychological component of many of these problems is the need for behavioral change on multiple levels. To stimulate such change, the public sector, societal actors, and the private sector can initiate behavioral interventions, ideally changing behavior simultaneously and consistently on population, community, and individual levels. Intervention frameworks like the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW)1 can be helpful for a systematic approach to developing such behavioral interventions.

In addition to the BCW, using persuasive games2 as an intervention tool looks promising. Persuasive games seem able to influence players’ Capability (including knowledge and skills) and Motivation (all brain processes that energize and direct behavior), two components of the BCW that theoretically directly influence behavior. Moreover, these games can create personal experiences, making societal issues that may feel overwhelming and far away understandable and relevant, even for skeptics. Crucial to this is that the game’s message is interweaved within the game’s content without the risk of explicit approaches to persuasion that can backfire or be of limited use.

Still, despite the widespread application and promising impact of persuasive games, evaluation studies’ results often seem inconclusive. Game scholars, therefore, conclude that there is still a long way to go before the viability of games as a persuasive medium can be firmly determined. This dissertation attempts to make a positive contribution to this task.

Any research that aims to increase the impact of persuasive games, particularly how they can convey Meaning (ensuring that the game will serve its goal and support knowledge transfer)3, seems like a welcome contribution to the validation research field of persuasive games. Within the context of persuasive games that promote a sustainable society, a focus on reducing players’ attitude-behavior gap seems particularly relevant to strengthen this Meaning. The gap exists when individuals’ attitudes do not correlate with their actions. People can be conflicted by several factors that lead to inaction, although they often agree that action is required. For example, many people agree that humans cause climate change and that it needs to be addressed. However, they still do not make the necessary personal sacrifices to adjust their lifestyle. To reduce the attitude-behavior gap, it seems essential to strengthen people’s behavioral intentions. According to the influential Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)4, behavioral intentions are the most direct determinants of human behavior. They are directly influenced by one’s attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived control. In addition to these three behavioral predictors, it also seems relevant to examine the factor of responsibility to improve the behavioral impact of games for a sustainable society, as the attitude-behavior gap may be partly caused by people’s lack of responsibility to put their intentions into action...