Gamification or How to Make a “Green” Behavior Become a Habit

Introduction

Waste management is a crucial issue in tourist destinations (Shamshiry et al., 2011). Its management is a significant concern in those destinations with a high concentration of seasonal tourism with a relatively small resident population. A poor waste collection and management policy is an additional factor affecting the tourist destination's sustainability within this general problem. Thus, this factor is relevant to maintain the natural environment and has a significant impact on the perceived quality of the tourist destination. Moreover, the situation has been aggravated by the emergence of accommodation models based on the collaborative economy. The traveler should interact directly with the waste collection and processing services at the destination (Mendes et al., 2013).

Recycling behavior is fundamental in the context of sustainability. Although waste sorting is critical for environmental and economic reasons, its effectiveness can be conditioned by the travelers’ lack of information regarding regulations differentiated by municipalities (Gaggi et al., 2020). These problematic situations challenge administrations as they need to improve recycling rates as a part of their sustainability policies and improve their image as an environmentally aware municipality. These situations can be solved with incentives derived from gamification tools that motivate people to recycle. Among the gamification-specific elements that effectively support this behavior are feedback, prizes, and other collaborative and competitive factors (Helmefalk & Rosenlund, 2020).

Gamification has proven its potential to promote green behavior, convey comprehensive information through entertainment, reward users for good practices, improve engagement and help avoid problems arising from overtourism (Souza et al., 2020). This study used open data from the UrbanWaste project (2016) within the European H2020 framework program, which sought gamification to provide solutions to the sustainability problems of tourist destinations with a seasonal floating population far exceeding the resident one. One of the solutions provided by the project was the design and implementation of a gamified mobile application, WasteApp, to encourage recycling behavior in tourists since it has been seen that linking gamification with technology makes it extremely attractive to citizens (Guillen, Hamari, & Quist, 2021). In this research, an attempt was made to see if the application encourages the desired behavior and its effect on the tourist destination image (Aguiar-Castillo et al., 2019).

This chapter is organized as follows: a short state of the art on gamification and sustainable tourism is presented, followed by a description of the work based on user satisfaction and the habit cycle (Urban Waste, 2016, European Project), followed by solutions and recommendations for marketers and designers. Finally, future research directions and the conclusion where a new gamification concept are explained.