Serious gaming as a tool to facilitate inclusive business; a review of untapped potential

Speelman, Erika N.; Rodela, Romina; Doddema, Mandy; Ligtenberg, A.

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2019.09.010

Cited by 24 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Farmers in our research used the game as support for learning, sharing knowledge and practices towards opportunities and against the obstacles. The support of serious games as forecasting scenario evaluation tool for agricultural land use planning has been presented in numerous research studies with similar results to ours: educational purpose, knowledge and management practices sharing, conflict mediation and leadership assessment (Garcia et al 2018;Speelman et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Combining participatory games and backcasting to support collective scenario evaluation: an action research approach for sustainable agroforestry landscape management

et al. 2020

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The combined and interacting effects of land-use change, resource extraction and climate change threaten the sustainability of millions of mainly smallholder farms in tropical agroforested landscapes. In many of these landscapes, coordinated action among stakeholders at landscape level would help to address challenges such as pests and diseases, price crises and climate change. However, methods to facilitate the co-production of sustainable landscape management in such complex multi-stakeholder systems are currently largely lacking. In this paper, we present a novel approach to explore pathways for the sustainability transition of agroforestry systems. By combining participatory forecasting and backcasting approaches, based on serious games and future vision development, we explore relevant agroforestry management strategies for reaching sustainable future coffee-based agroforestry landscapes. We focused our research on the challenges faced in the main coffee-producing area in Nicaragua. Here, we organized five participatory game sessions to explore farmer decision-making processes, farming strategies and to develop new networks and stimulate social learning among farmers. In the associated backcasting workshop, the most influential game session participants joined technicians, researchers and municipality officials to collectively envision sustainable future landscape management. In all game sessions, farmers developed diversified coffee-based agroforested landscapes characterised by increased density and diversity of shade trees, for the purpose of income diversification as well as forest conservation. During the backcasting workshop, the participants identified policy instruments and community-based solutions for the transition to sustainable landscapes. Our participatory approach facilitated discussion on landscape planning among farmers and other stakeholders and allowed the outline of a pathway towards the collective envisioned future landscape. The combination of participatory forecasting and backcasting proved to be a helpful tool to support multi-stakeholder processes towards sustainable landscape management in this and other complex landscapes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Combining participatory games and backcasting to support collective scenario evaluation: an action research approach for sustainable agroforestry landscape management

et al. 2020

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“…As in all game-based studies, the external validity of our results (the extent to which the game decisions reflect what participants would do in real life) is difficult to assess (Jackson, 2012). Our game did not allow more detailed incorporation of the complex socio-ecological context and the study of social interactions as is common in serious boardgame studies (e.g., Celio et al, 2019;Speelman et al, 2019;Andreotti et al, 2020). Adding more complexity would risk both the tractability of the analysis and player engagement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Games have been used to study individual or group coordination strategies and facilitate change processes and social learning in complex socio-ecological contexts (e.g., Bodonirina et al, 2018;Celio et al, 2019;Speelman et al, 2019;Andreotti et al, 2020;Garcìa-Barrios et al, 2020). In other settings, games have been used to investigate the effectiveness of alternative payment structures in encouraging pro-conservation behaviour in the context of forest resources (e.g., Travers et al, 2011;Narloch et al, 2012;Kaczan et al, 2017;Salk et al, 2017;Andersson et al, 2018;Gatiso et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Payments and Property Rights on Forest User Decisions

Rakotonarivo

Dillon

Duthie

et al. 2021

Front. Conserv. Sci.

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Clearing forests for swidden agriculture, despite providing food to millions of farmers in the tropics, can be a major driver of deforestation. Payments for ecosystem services schemes can help stop swidden agriculture-induced forest loss by rewarding forest users for maintaining forests. Clear and secure property rights are a key prerequisite for the success of these payment schemes. In this study, we use a novel iterative and dynamic game in Madagascar and Kenya to examine farmer responses to individual and communal rights to forestlands, with and without financial incentives, in the context of swidden agricultural landscapes. We find that farmer pro conservation behaviour, defined by the propensity to keep forests or fallows on their lands, as well as the effects of land tenure and conservation incentive treatments on such behaviour, differ across the two contexts. The average percentages of land left forest/fallow in the game are 65 and 35% in Kenya and Madagascar, respectively. Individual ownership significantly improves decisions to preserve forests or leave land fallow in Madagascar but has no significant effect in Kenya. Also, the effect of the individual tenure treatment varies across education and wealth levels in Madagascar. Subsidy increases farmers' willingness to support conservation interests in both countries, but its effect is four times greater in Kenya. We find no interaction effects of the two treatments in either country. We conclude that the effectiveness of financial incentives for conservation and tenure reform in preserving forestland vary significantly across contexts. We show how interactive games can help develop a more targeted and practical approach to environmental policy.

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“…They have the potential to significantly change policymaking process and outcomes, if played by keystone actors 29 , i.e., people vested with power and responsibility having a disproportionate ability to steer the direction of the system. Participatory games represent an untapped potential to address environmental issues 30 . Yet, despite their capacity to integrate a plurality of perspectives and to support collective action preparing stakeholders to better cope with surprises, these games have yet to be successfully deployed at the scale of international decision-making and achieve macro-scale impact.…”

Section: Changing Narratives By Incorporating Human Decision-making Into Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Before the Next COP: How to Stop Missing our Environmental Policy Targets

García¹,

Savilaakso²,

Verburg³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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While the scientific community has focused on documenting environmental degradation and developing scenarios that help identify the operational margins for system Earth, less attention has been given to the mental models of decision-makers that underpin environmental policies. We suggest that global efforts to stop deforestation and biodiversity loss are failing in part due to a critical blind spot in the analysis—human agency. To address this weakness, we propose to formulate mental models and translate them into strategy games. This will increase the representation of agency in scenario development and create spaces for deliberation between different worldviews. We claim that personal transformation can be achieved through transparent democratic dialogues that identify, challenge, and respond to the human and social limitations inherent to decision-making and we present empirical examples that validate that claim. Their transformation through gaming gives decision-makers access to the experience of consciousness: “what is it like being a stakeholder?”. Such experience will help to break free of established norms in science and political processes.

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Serious gaming as a tool to facilitate inclusive business; a review of untapped potential

Cited by 24 publications

References 38 publications

Combining participatory games and backcasting to support collective scenario evaluation: an action research approach for sustainable agroforestry landscape management

Combining participatory games and backcasting to support collective scenario evaluation: an action research approach for sustainable agroforestry landscape management

Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Payments and Property Rights on Forest User Decisions

Before the Next COP: How to Stop Missing our Environmental Policy Targets

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