Gamification and domestic energy consumption




A previous post referred to a review by Jonna Koivistoa and Juho Hamaria which covered a wide spectrum of papers on gamification. The following review has a much narrower focus, closer to the central topic of this blog.


Gamification and serious games within the domain of domestic energy consumption: A systematic review.

Johnson, Daniel; Horton, Ella; Mulcahy, Rory; & Foth, Marcus; Queensland University of Technology (2017)
Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 73, pp. 249-264.


The authors refer at the outset to “the urgent need to consider new approaches to motivating individuals to become more energy aware and to translate this knowledge into action.” From a search of 2831 articles, 26 were selected as most suitable for study. These are based on 25 primary studies reporting empirical data on the value of gamification and serious games on energy consumption. There is increasing interest in these tools “to motivate, engage and educate people regarding energy consumption and related concerns.”

Serious games are defined as “any form of interactive computer-based game software for one or multiple players to be used on any platform and that has been developed with the intention to be more than entertainment” and gamification as “…the use of game elements in non-game contexts to improve user experience and user engagement”. Serious games are “fully fledged games” while gamification “refers to the application of parts of games in a non-game setting”. Theory is still emerging, but a distinction has been suggested between rewards-based gamification (points, levels, badges etc.), which may yield short-term changes (for example in understanding and behaviour), and meaningful gamification, pursued for its own sake, in which change may be long-term. The review seeks “to closely examine the empirical evidence for the effectiveness of applied games in the domestic energy consumption domain.” The term “applied games” is used to capture the overlapping categories of “serious games” and “gamification” used above.

Three categories were devised: fully digital games that have no real world integration but are aimed at influencing the real world; games that may be digital but have some integration with the real world; and games with no digital elements that occur, and are thus fully integrated, in the real world.
A system of quality assessment is described for the papers reviewed, and shortcomings are noted in some, for example lack of information on the recruitment and selection of participants, and absence of controls. Twelve of the studies were rated as of higher quality in terms of the aims of the review, and a number of these appear to be particularly relevant to domestic energy issues; details appear at the end of this post.
Some of the factors identified as encouraging positive outcomes are competition and social sharing, feedback, rewards and challenges. The review lists numerous caveats in interpreting the results of the studies, but nevertheless claims that overall “these studies provide encouraging initial evidence of the utility of applied games for short-term changes in energy consumption behaviour” while the “efficacy of applied games in terms of mid to long-term behaviour change was less well-substantiated”. It notes that the “reliability and accuracy of the reported real-world behaviour outcomes and subsequent generalisations are compromised by methodological issues in a large proportion of the reviewed studies, even in those assessed as higher quality.”

In conclusion there is “encouraging initial evidence that applied games can have a positive influence in the domestic energy conservation domain, but overall this review provides a good foundation for further work as opposed to conclusive evidence.”

Details of studies noted above:

EnergyLife, mobile app
see EnergyLife: Pervasive energy awareness for households
(Gamberini et al, 2011)

Power Explorer, mobile app
see Power explorer - A casual game style for encouraging long term behavior change among teenagers (Gustafsson, Bång and Svahn, 2009)

Power Agent , mobile app
see Evaluation of a Pervasive Game for Domestic Energy Engagement Among Teenagers (Gustafsson, Katzeff, & Bang 2009)
available at

EnerCities, non-mobile (online)
see EnerCities - A Serious Game to Stimulate Sustainability and Energy Conservation: Preliminary Results (Knol & De Vries 2011)
available at

Power House, non-mobile (online)
see Increasing Energy Efficiency With Entertainment Media (Reeves et al. 2015)

Do It In The Dark, non-mobile (online)
Social mobilization of climate change: University students conserving energy through multiple pathways for peer engagement (Senbel, Ngo, & Blair 2014)
request text from

eViz, nonmobile (computer game)
see EXPLOITING GAMING TECHNOLOGIES TO VISUALISE DYNAMIC THERMAL QUALITIES OF A DOMESTIC DWELLING: PILOT STUDY OF AN INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL APARTMENT
(Stone et al. 2014)
available at

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Energy maps and calculators

  The production and use of different forms of energy have been mapped geographically for a variety of reasons, and some examples will be outlined briefly before describing a recent place-based energy calculator for the UK. Scales of mapping vary in the examples from the global through region, country, city and parish down to city block. Both energy production and use have been mapped by type, such as coal, gas and oil, wind and solar renewables, by the associated emissions, and by energy flows between geographical regions. The purpose and the intended audience vary from case to case. The Global Atlas for Renewable Energy is a resource coordinated by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) which “allows its users to find maps of renewable energy resources for locations across the world.” (Global Atlas for Renewable Energy, 2021). The Global Solar Atlas provides information on irradiation levels on land worldwide within a suitable range of latitudes, and calculates the o
Read more

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage

    Introduction The need to limit the harmful effects of climate change is a powerful motive for preventing carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, and for removing CO2 that is already there, but there can be subsidiary aims associated with carbon capture, and there are many methods of accomplishing it. According to a definition published in 2014, “Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) encompasses methods and technologies to remove CO2 from … flue gas and from the atmosphere, followed by recycling the CO2 for utilization and determining safe and permanent storage options” (RCN-CCUS, 2014a). A definition of carbon capture and storage (CCS) used by Torvanger (2020) “refers to a group of technologies that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, or from process industries." The term sequestration is also used for the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere or from combustion gases, and permanent prevention of its ret
Read more

Climate fiction and climate action

The interactions between climate fiction and environmental activism are the subject of a paper by Alacovska and Holt (2023). They describe environmental activism as “grassroots, decentralised social movements” which attempt to address issues of “inequality and systemic injustice arising from anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and ecological collapse” by means of non-hierarchical collective organising. The main object of their paper is to propose methods for future research, but here we will only draw on their introduction to the subject and its background. They believe that the popular genre of climate fiction influences climate activism , with the potential to stimulate the imagination and to energise the “quest for the attainment of better climate alternatives”. This stands in contrast with much writing on climate change, which is concerned with data and “mathematical prediction models for forecasting and comprehending the gravity of global environmental challeng
Read more