Gamification for Sustainability Transitions – A New Literature Review and Research Agenda

In a newly published scoping review in Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, we investigated how play, games, and gamification may support sustainability transitions by engaging and bringing together stakeholders. The study, titled “Play, games, and gamification to support sustainability transitions: a scoping review and research agenda” (Fernández Galeote et al., 2025), examines a promising approach at a time in which transitioning towards more sustainable systems is crucial but traditional methods for public engagement have shown limited results in motivating change.

Using the scoping review method, the study analyzed 86 empirical outputs to elucidate whether playful and gameful techniques, which typically leverage individual motivation and agency to promote psychological and behavioral change, can transform practices and support large-scale transitions. Compared to previous explorations of games and sustainability, the study offers two unique points of departure. The first one is the analysis of interventions explicitly as part of sustainability transitions, rather than as tools to promote sustainability in specific contexts (e.g., formal education, household consumption) or areas (e.g., energy, food, mobility). The second one is the inclusion of multiple types of activities rooted in play beyond what we traditionally call games and gamification, such as various artistic practices.

The study’s findings lead to three distinct agendas to inform future research. First, our contextual agenda aims to enhance the studies’ alignment with their targeted transitions by proposing more explicit and diverse conceptual frameworks, including a broader range of practitioners, considering the role of emotions, and embedding gamified interventions within direct socio-technical and socio-ecological transitions. We also propose implementing these interventions beyond the West and at larger scales.

Second, the design and implementation agenda advocates for increasing the effectiveness and diversity of designs through effective user-centered design strategies, the consideration of individual player needs, stronger design justifications, playful designs beyond traditional games and singular goal structures, the use of immersive elements and technologies, and the addition of pre-existing sustainability and engagement techniques.

Third, our empirical research agenda aims to increase the quality and contribution of future studies by calling for more clearly defined participant samples in larger and longer studies, including comparisons even in the field, further methodological variety, criticality in intervention assessment, and calling for the exploration of deeper forms of learning and a more complete reporting of player experiences in context.

The review resulted in two overarching observations of the state of the art. First, it appears that rather than addressing practices in their full complexity, interventions typically focus on supporting user agency, and many prioritize education, simulations, and specific agents’ behavior change. Second, we found only a few large-scale interventions, but there was sufficient variety to inspire multiple forms of gamification that support large transition dynamics.

We hope that the study’s holistic view of engagement, rooted in playfulness, helps educators, designers, and researchers in this growing field in planning and conducting more effective and novel interventions. We also expect that our use of sustainability transition-specific lenses sheds light on the current state of gamification not just as a tool for sustainability learning, persuasion, and behavior but more broadly as a vehicle to advance transitions themselves, where much work is still needed to holistically transform practices and boost large-scale dynamics.

Fernández Galeote, D., Gabrielaitis, L., Guillén, G., & Hamari, J. (2025). Play, games, and gamification to support sustainability transitions: a scoping review and research agenda. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (First published: July 1, 2025).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2025.101025

Authors: Daniel Fernández Galeote, Linas Gabrielaitis, Georgina Guillén, and Juho Hamari

Funding: This work was supported by the Research Council of Finland Flagship Programme under grant 359173—Forest-Human-Machine Interplay (UNITE) and the Jane and Aatos Erkko foundation through the CONVERGENCE project.

#Playful interventions #Serious games #Game-based learning #Arts-based methods #Public participation #Sustainability transformations