Promoting systems thinking and pro-environmental policy support through serious games

Abstract

We evaluated whether teaching the public about the “critical zone”–the Earth’s outer skin, critical to all life—via a digital serious game can affect adults’ systems thinking about the environment and support policies to protect the environment. An experiment (N = 152) compared the effects of playing “CZ Investigator” versus viewing a static website on systems thinking about the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus and support for relevant public policies. The serious game had the strongest effects on our outcomes of interest for those participants with less past science education. For these individuals, the serious game, relative to the static website, increased perceptions of the strength of interconnections across food, energy, and water systems (p < .01) and support for policies that regulated human impacts on the environment (p < .01). Mediation analysis revealed that increases in systems thinking explain increases in policy support. This group of users also indicated that the game was easier, more enjoyable, and more effective for learning than the website. Mediation analyses also revealed that perceived learning effectiveness was a stronger mediator than ease and enjoyment effects of the game on systems thinking and policy support. These results are valuable for environmental education because understanding interconnections within complex systems is vital for solving environmental problems, particularly for learners with less background in science.

Increasing awareness of climate change with immersive virtual reality

“…In a similar vein, our sample size was rather small, so that possible moderating variables for the effect of the VR intervention on environmental awareness could not be assessed. For example, Sajjadi et al (2022) found that serious games about system thinking had the strongest effects on pro-environmental attitudes for those participants with less past science education. Future studies should take such variables into account.…”

“…Lezak and Thibodeau (2016) were able to show that systems thinkers tend to support policies on climate change. Sajjadi et al (2022) could show that a learning experience can increase systems thinking and that systems thinking in turn leads to policy support regarding measures concerning foodenergy-water nexus. The authors have developed an interesting method to indirectly measure system thinking by assessing different scenarios and their impacts.…”

How Does VR Affect Emotional Appeal and Persuasiveness of Gain Versus Loss-Framed Messages?

“…Past research has already shown that VR might be an effective tool to raise awareness and subsequently increase the pro-environmental behavioral intention of users (Ahn et al, 2015), particularly for those with less science education (Sajjadi et al, 2022). However, despite the increasing popularity of VR technology, the pervasiveness of immersive VR devices (Head-mounted Displays—HMDs) in the United States is still relatively low, at only 15% of the households in the population (Kolmar, 2022).…”

Effects of communicating lifetime risks and screening rates of colorectal cancer and breast cancer

“…Second, although we have message conditions in our experimental design that present both cancer risks and screening rates information, we did not explicitly specify a link between these two components (that higher screening rates are associated with lower national risks of dying from cancer). As the actual cancer risks are lower than what people estimated, specifying that the level of risk is due in part to the high prevalence of cancer screening may encourage people to think about the issue more holistically to better understand the causal mechanisms (known as systems thinking, Arnold & Wade, 2015; Sajjadi et al., 2022). In this situation, screening intention may increase even if people know that the risks are lower than what they expected, though this assumption should be tested in future research.…”