Management Review

Management Review ›› 2025, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (6): 238-251.

• Public Management • Previous Articles    

The Relationship between the Usage of Environmental Games and Normative Environmental Motivation—A Longitudinal Experimental Investigation of Gamification Intervention

Qi Hang1,2,3, Si Teng4, Wang Guangchao5, Shao Shuai6, Ma Shoufeng2   

  1. 1. Interdisciplinary Research Institute in New Finance and Economics (School of Digital Economics), Hubei University of Economics, Wuhan 430074;
    2. College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072;
    3. Collaborative Innovation Center for Emissions Trading System Co-constructed by the Province and Ministry, Wuhan 430074;
    4. School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100083;
    5. School of Information Management, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430074;
    6. School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237
  • Received:2023-01-09 Published:2025-07-10

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Abstract: Under the background of the digital economy, the environmental games represented by Ant-Forest have led the gamification fashion of environmental protection, which is also an example of the technology-empowered environmental governance innovation. Although previous studies have confirmed that environmental games promote pro-environmental behavior, most of the existing studies are cross-sectional surveys, which can hardly smooth out the dispute about the relationship between the continuous use of environmental games and the normative environmental motivation, and to confirm the short-term and long-term effects of gamification interventions. This study recruits 141 subjects who have rare experience with Ant-Forest and first organizes a two-stage randomized field experiment. In the first stage (30 days), the subjects are randomly assigned to four experimental groups to receive corresponding experimental treatments and participate in a questionnaire survey before and after the experiment. In the second stage (110 days), all subjects do not receive any intervention and only participate in the follow-up survey at the end. A series of statistical analyses indicate that (1) normative environmental motivation can significantly positively predict the willingness to use environmental games a month later, but the willingness to use environmental games cannot predict normative environmental motivation in the future; (2) gamification intervention significantly improves the environmental concern and psychological ownership of players, and it is sustainable after the intervention is weakened or even disappear, while the traditional intervention, environmental appeals, can only significantly improve the environmental concern. (3) A negative interaction effect is observed between gamification intervention and environmental appeals. Therefore, gamification intervention with extremely low social and economic costs can be an effective alternative to environmental appeals. However, the government still needs to take comprehensive measures to train the public to “form a lasting and universal green lifestyle”. This study makes certain theoretical contributions to the exploration of the internal mechanism of how the sustainable use of environmental games influences players’ psychology and motivations.

Key words: environmental governance, environmental appeals, limited attention, psychological ownership, cross-lagged study