Serious Gaming as a Means to Change Adolescents’ Attitudes Towards Saving Energy; Preliminary Results from the EnerCities Case

A considerable part of the energy consumers of tomorrow are today’s secondary school graduates. Policymakers therefore increasingly focus on adolescents to stimulate awareness of sustainability and energy saving. Educational or serious games are often regarded as effective tools to reach youngsters due to their engaging character. In the current project, we will test the effectiveness of the serious game EnerCities, developed to positively influence energy-related household behavioural attitudes. To test the intervention effectiveness of the game on several energy-related attitudes, a between-participants design was adopted: Measurements of attitudes between a group who had actually played the EnerCities (experimental group) and a control group were compared. It appears if playing the EnerCities game has resulted in slightly higher attitudes towards performing specific household behaviours that have consequences in terms of energy use