Gamification of forest-going: Opportunities for players, landowners and the forest industry

Abstract

<p>There is a substantial body of literature suggesting a wide range of health benefits from forest bathing, hiking and walking in nature. For this reason, it is worth looking into technologies that could direct people to these activities. In this study, we focused on location-based games (LBGs) to identify and elucidate opportunities that the games provide for forest-goers, landowners and the forest industry. We invited experts from the fields of gamification (n=5), forestry (n=8) and others (n=3) to a design workshop on this topic. Using a qualitative analysis and synthesis to organize the generated workshop material, we ended up with eight potential aspects where LBGs could benefit forest-goers, and six categories of use cases where the games could benefit landowners and the forest industry. Our findings can be understood as a general overview of the design space of LBG – forest –human interaction and serve as a basis for future work in this domain.</p>