Development of a Serious Game for Environmental Awareness and Sustainable Behaviour in Addressing Climate Change and Microplastic Pollution

The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities

Developing a marine ecology simulation as a serious game, this PhD project examines educational impact, behaviour change motivation, and the value for marine biologists and policymakers in addressing climate change and microplastic pollution.

A simulation of specific marine ecologies found at the ex-HMS Scylla artificial reef will be developed to demonstrate environmental changes caused by human-led activities including climate change and microplastics.

The project will build on prior work spanning the past 15 years. The first stage of this work was held at the University of Birmingham by Dr David White and Professor Bob Stone and involved the development and measurement of marine ecology simulations.

The second stage, a pilot study, commented at Staffordshire University in late 2022 by Dr David White with Professor Bob Stone (UoB) and Dr Deborah Cracknell (University of Plymouth) acting as advisors. A paper detailing the pilot study has been submitted for publication in early 2023.

Serious games are a growing area of research, and are typically deployed in education, usually for younger audiences, training in industry, and behavioural change in health. The pilot study examined how a complex, validated simulation of a marine ecosystem could be modified into a serious game to demonstrate the effects of climate change and microplastics on a marine ecology based in the coastal waters of the UK.

The PhD project will follow on from results and conclusions of the pilot study by examining the following research questions:

1. What is the educational impact of a marine ecology serious game for participants when users can change environmental parameters, compared to out of the box simulation scenarios?
2. What is the impact of a serious game for motivating behavioural change of participants when comparing broad and specific causes of human-led environmental change?
3. What value is there when serious games based on validated simulations are acquired by marine biologists for their work? Would policyholders benefit also?