Persuasive Pervasive Games : the Case of Impacting Energy Consumption

Sammanfattning: The number of media channels for persuasive messaging has increased tremendously in recent years. New persuasion media such as pervasive games have come onto the stage. Pervasive games are digital games extending into the real world (spatial expansion), draws unwitting non playing bystanders into the game (social expansion) and are played without any delimiters on playing and non-playing time (temporal expansion). Persuasion strategies have also improved, becoming more rapid, more subtle and more complex. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of the persuasion processes from playing persuasive pervasive games and its effects. It is a study into the use of pervasive games to influence perceptions, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and consumer behaviour. Despite all new developments, it remains difficult to persuade households into becoming more conservational with household electricity, for example. Does pervasive game design have qualities that during play stimulates the players to become more conservational with household electricity? Building on theories of game design and of persuasion, the thesis presents three empirical studies involving actual playing of persuasive pervasive games by electricity consumers, where the processes through which persuasion are brought about by the playing of the games are studied. The thesis employs depth interviews and structural equation modelling to explore how the pervasive games affect persuasion. The thesis finds among other things that social expansion in a pervasive game is a powerful tool for persuasion and thereby contributes theoretically to the literature on pervasive persuasive games, and practically by providing game researchers and persuasion practitioners new insights that can be used for designing more effective pervasive persuasive games.