MKAI Inclusive Forum November 2022: Transforming Sustainability Through Gamification

This month at the MKAI Inclusive Forum on Transforming Sustainability Through Gamification

As the severity of the effects of Climate Change intensifies, we are experiencing temperature rise, melting of the glaciers, and extreme weather events increasing in frequency. Everything we do and every decision we make can have a net positive or net negative effect on our natural environment. Across the food we eat, the ways that we travel, and even how we use digital services, there are hundreds of everyday opportunities for each of us to act more sustainability, but we don’t always take these opportunities. Sometimes, we aren’t even aware of the environmental best course of action or the effects of a given behaviour or action.

We need quick fixes that can encourage the people who are most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our lands and oceans to change their negative behaviour. Adjustments that will greatly lessen the stress on planetary systems.

And so at this forum, we asked:

1) How can we employ gamified strategies to foster or boost the crucial (positive) sustainable behaviours that lead to a significant shift in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?
2) How can we use gamification to foster responsible behaviour?
3) What ethical limitations or issues do we need to take into account?
4) In what contexts has the use of gamification helped to lessen environmental impact?
5) What will it take to scale the techniques that work effectively and ethically?

Forum Speakers and Contributors: 

• Daniel Fernandez Galeote, Game Researcher at Gamification Group, Tampere University
• Benjamin Douglas, PhD student in the University of Wisconsin–Madison Psychology Department
• Amanda Kramer, Instruction Design Strategist
• Filip Wojcik, Doctoral Researcher at University of Warsaw; Senior Consultant at Deloitte’s Sustainability & Economics Team