Eco-Gamification Platform to Promote Consumers’ Engagement in the Textile and Clothing Circular Value Chain

Abstract

The textile and clothing (T&C) value chain is one of the most polluting in the world and one that produces the most waste. It is, therefore, important to encourage the circular economy (CE) model in this sector to reduce pollution, mitigate the effects of waste production, and, consequently, increase environmental sustainability. Leveraging end-consumer engagement in a CE mindset in the T&C sector is crucial, as they are the last player in a typical linear value chain. Therefore, a platform that supports and promotes sustainable tasks to manage one’s fashion products, through the use of gamification techniques, can be of utmost importance. In this article, we identify impactful carbon footprint consumer actions and solutions for the T&C consumer phase. After that, we survey gamification frameworks for analyzing techniques, at the system design level, which enable the engagement of the final consumer in the CE process. Then, we select and use one of such frameworks, Gameful Design Heuristics (GDH), for defining the gamification structure needed to implement on a business-to-consumer-to-consumer (B2C2C) context of a circular economy process, linking it to the aforementioned actions and solutions. As result, we present a B2C2C circular business process model for the T&C value chain and propose the design model of a gamified platform for the final consumers, which allows them to register the consumer-to-business (C2B) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) activities, from the circular value chain’s business process, and benefit from a game-like experience. All the model features have been mapped to the GDH framework heuristics, validating that it is possible to support a set of defined heuristics of applied gamification for promoting CE in the T&C value chain.

Gamification Equilibrium: The Fulcrum for Balanced Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Rewards in Learning Systems

“…This comes from Chou's claim that the models' constructs (referred to as the 8 core drives), are back of all human motivated behaviours. Its use across diverse sectors including education [170], [171], healthcare [172], [173], human resource [174] and business [175], [176] demonstrates its versatility and broad appeal [177], [178]. In addition to these, other notable frameworks like Nicholson's RECIPE [32] and Lander's SPIRAL [65] add richness to the strategies for gamification design, enhancing their practical applicability beyond mere extrinsic motivators.…”

A Systematic Review of Polluting Processes Produced by the Textile Industry and Proposals for Abatement Methods

“…On the one hand, the textile industries use toxic chemicals at various stages, such as sizing, softening, desizing, polishing, and finishing agents [13][14][15][16]. These processes are followed by wastewater containing caustic, ammonia, sulfur, lead, heavy metals, and other toxic substances [10,17,18]. Based on these problems, industrial companies need to implement appropriate methods to reduce or eliminate the pollution produced by this industry, one of them being the beginning of the supply chain, which refers to procuring raw materials from suppliers that market environmentally friendly products [19,20].…”

The Potential of Gamification for Social Sustainability: Meaning and Purposes in Agri-Food Industry

“…Indeed, by leveraging marketing strategies, businesses can promote the purchase of products, engaging more consumers and ensuring more market share through gamification processes and applications [15]. According to the marketing viewpoint, gamification is helpful in changing attitudes and behaviours fostering value creation for companies [16,17]. Indeed, it is able to use stimuli and gamified elements (such as rewards and badges) that are properly designed with the help of innovative technologies (e.g., virtual and augmented reality) to motivate consumers to follow rules As emerges from this analysis, the extant literature reviews on gamification are focused on systematising the theoretical foundation of gamification, consumer behaviours during the implementation of gamification strategies, impacts of gamification on learning, benefits from gamification adoption, the game design mechanism and features, the conceptualisation of gamification in the service field and related functions.…”