Bastian Kordyaka
University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Today, millions worldwide play popular location-based games (LBGs) such as Pokémon GO. LBGs are designed to be played outdoors, and past research has shown that they can incentivize players to travel to nature. To further explore this nature-connection, we investigated via a mixed-methods approach the connections between engagement with LBGs, inspiration and environmental awareness as follows. First, we identified relevant gamification features in Study 1. Based on the insights, we built a survey that we sent to Pokémon GO players (N=311) in Study 2. The results showed that (a) social networking features, reminders, and virtual objects were the most relevant gamification features to explain inspired by playing Pokémon GO and that (b) inspired to outdoor engagement partially mediated the relationship between inspired by playing Pokémon GO and environmental awareness. These results warrant further investigations into whether LBGs could motivate pro-environment attitudes and inspire people to care for nature.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642786
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2024.acm.org/)