Abstract
In recent years, gamification has seen a rapid rise in popularity across a wide range of fields, from education and health to marketing and sustainability. At the same time, environmental challenges such as waste management and climate change have become increasingly urgent, requiring not only technological innovation but also a meaningful change in human behavior. As a result, gamification is often seen as a promising way to encourage eco-friendly actions by making sustainable practices more engaging and accessible.
To better understand this relationship, I used both a technical approach focused on implementation and an STS perspective focused on understanding its broader impacts.
My technical report, HoosTrash: A Gamified Mobile Application for Reducing Litter on University of Virginia Grounds, describes the application my teammates and I developed for our capstone project. Litter around the University of Virginia (UVA) Grounds and the surrounding community presents an ongoing environmental challenge. To address this issue, we developed a mobile application that gamifies litter collection by allowing users to log collected trash, earn experience points, evolve their own virtual pets, and compare progress with friends.
The app features a map-based interface that displays nearby trash locations (which can be crowdsourced), the user’s current location, and activity markers showing both the user’s recent trash logs and their friends’ contributions. It also provides information on the nearest trash can, making proper disposal more convenient and accessible.
Overall, HoosTrash, transforms the everyday, often overlooked act of disposing of trash into an interactive experience. By blending a combination of social features, visualization of data, and game mechanics such as progress tracking and rewards, the application aims to promote sustained user engagement while reinforcing positive environmental behavior and habit formation.
My STS research project, The Effects of Gamification on Eco-friendly Behaviors, examines how gamification influences individuals’ motivation to adopt sustainable practices, whether it can foster a genuine sense of environmental responsibility beyond external rewards, and whether it can function as an effective long-term sustainability strategy. Through a literature review on gamification, eco-sustainability, ecogamification, and behavior science, my project explores the effects of ecogamification and how it can be designed to support meaningful eco-friendly behaviors.
My findings show that while gamification can effectively increase engagement and motivate eco-friendly behavior, this impact is often short-term and driven by extrinsic rewards such as points and badges. These systems can initiate behavior change, but they rarely lead to lasting habits and may even reduce intrinsic motivation over time if the design relies heavily on rewards.
However, gamification can support more meaningful change when it goes beyond simple rewards and fosters intrinsic motivation. Design elements such as visible real-world impact, emotional engagement, and a sense of ownership can make it easier for people to internalize sustainable values and maintain those behaviors over time.
Overall, the findings suggest that gamification works best as a supporting tool rather than a standalone solution, and it should be combined with broader social and institutional efforts to achieve lasting sustainability outcomes.
