Climate change is the greatest collective action problem of our times. Large-scale behavioural and social change to address climate challenges may be facilitated by behaviourally informed communication approaches and novel tools for educational and information programmes. In this project, we test the potential of “edutainment” through video games on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. While recent studies have shown that interventions combining entertainment with education can have positive impacts in contexts such as health and gender (e.g., Vogt et al. 2016, Banerjee et al. 2019), edutainment remains relatively unexplored in the context of pro-environmental behaviour (Constantino et al., 2022).

Partnering with Sony Interactive Entertainment, we are designing and developing a video game aimed at improving knowledge, attitudes, and emotional engagement with climate change and sustainable behaviour – with a focus on food-related choices and their environmental impact. The game will follow the style of a single-player graphic adventure game, with a main story that does not revolve around climate change or sustainable behaviour. Our plan is to recruit a sample of active gamers in the U.S. and/or the UK and incentivize them to play the game. The research design includes a baseline survey before playing the game, as well as a post-intervention survey. Outcome variables will include measures of knowledge, attitudes, and intentions regarding climate change and sustainable food choices, as well as an incentive-compatible experimental online supermarket – where subjects actually receive the products they purchased – to assess whether playing the game influences behaviour in real-world choice contexts.

Participants will be randomized to receive access to one of five different game versions. Story, world, and gameplay will stay largely the same in all versions, but we exogenously vary the presence of environmental issues in the game, as well the types of feedback that the player receives about his or her in-game actions. In particular, we plan to create one control version that does not include any educational content on sustainable behaviour. In the four treatment versions, the game embeds situations in which players will face choices with environmental impact and where the potential externalities will be visualized through the game environment (e.g., deforestation and biodiversity loss). The basic treatment version includes no further feedback. Additional versions will further include feedback messages regarding sustainable behaviour stressing either individual efficacy or social reinforcement, or both.

With an estimated 3 billion gamers worldwide, video games can offer a huge potential audience for light-touch behavioural interventions. They also represent a unique media format, as players navigate through the story and interact with the narrative world through their own actions and choices. Our research addresses several questions. Can video games be used to improve knowledge and foster pro-environmental attitudes? If yes, does this translate into actual behavioural change? Are gamers more responsive to appeals based on individual efficacy or social motives for sustainable action? Our aim is thus to expand the toolkit of researchers and policy makers by exploring and pioneering a new form of scalable interventions for pro-environmental behaviour through video games.