Gamification for Climate Change Engagement: A User-Centered Design Agenda

Abstract

Policymakers and environmental organizations are increasingly implementing gamification because of its ability to stimulate playful learning and transform human attitudes and behavior. Although it has become a prominent development for climate change engagement, the literature does not adequately address how the underlying motivational systems depend upon user-centered design mechanisms. If gamification is to realize its potential for climate change engagement, it is crucial for designers to apply solid user-centered design principles, as suboptimal designs may do more harm than good. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on gamification for climate change engagement to investigate the application of user-centered design and find key links between design choices and outcomes in 64 articles. We develop the findings into a user-centered design agenda and framework for game-based climate change engagement. This agenda includes design aspects–team multidisciplinarity, context dependence, user involvement, iterative testing, and design choice explication–and outcome aspects–value to users, game mechanics for learning, game content for learning, affective engagement, social engagement, changing real-world behavior, and using game data for research. The agenda is intended to inform gamification academics and practitioners aiming to design effective games for climate change engagement and its recommendations may apply to other complex issues.