Abstract
During recent years, the need to promote environmental knowledge and pro-environmental behaviors has become more evident. The efforts towards effective environmental education include the use of simulations that aim to bring human players closer to the natural world. In the specific case of swarm simulators, they are often constructed in a two-dimensional space and experienced from a third-person perspective, lacking the immersive benefits of seeing a game world through the character’s eyes. In this study, we developed schooling and flocking simulators to examine whether playing the simulators can affect people’s understanding of swarming behavior and feeling of connectedness to nature, made quantifiable through pre- and post-simulator questionnaires. Experiencing the simulations in first-person perspective was found to increase feelings of kinship with animals, raising connectedness to nature. Additionally, a positive correlation was observed between people’s engagement in the simulation and the increase of connectedness to nature. These findings could be useful insights in designing serious games for raising awareness or behavioral change related to environmental education.
S. Piliouras, J. Li, V. I. Dap and I. Arwert—Contributed equally to this research.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Survey items used in this study can be found here: https://osf.io/ptqav/?view_only=f452d580fe69425989cb1f5d8880eb2b.
References
Barbas, T.A., Paraskevopoulos, S., Stamou, A.G.: The effect of nature documentaries on students’ environmental sensitivity: a case study. Learn. Media Technol. 34(1), 61–69 (2009)
Brockmyer, J.H., Fox, C.M., Curtiss, K.A., McBroom, E., Burkhart, K.M., Pidruzny, J.N.: The development of the game engagement questionnaire: a measure of engagement in video game-playing. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 45(4), 624–634 (2009)
Coke, J.S., Batson, C.D., McDavis, K.: Empathic mediation of hel**: a two-stage model. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 36(7), 752 (1978)
Denisova, A., Cairns, P.: First person vs. third person perspective in digital games: do player preferences affect immersion? In: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 145–148 (2015)
Erhabor, N.I., Don, J.U.: Impact of environmental education on the knowledge and attitude of students towards the environment. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Educ. 11(12), 5367–5375 (2016)
Facer, K., Joiner, R., Stanton, D., Reid, J., Hull, R., Kirk, D.: Savannah: mobile gaming and learning? J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 20(6), 399–409 (2004)
Hansmann, R., Scholz, R.W., Francke, C.J.A., Weymann, M.: Enhancing environmental awareness: ecological and economic effects of food consumption. Simul. Gaming 36(3), 364–382 (2005)
IUCN: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (2022). https://www.iucnredlist.org/
Koutromanos, G., Tzortzoglou, F., Sofos, A.: Evaluation of an augmented reality game for environmental education: “Save Elli, Save the Environment’’. In: Mikropoulos, T.A. (ed.) Research on e-Learning and ICT in Education, pp. 231–241. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95059-4_14
Lee, Y., Kim, S.: Design of “TRASH TREASURE’’, a characters-based serious game for environmental education. In: de De Gloria, A., Veltkamp, R. (eds.) GALA 2015. LNCS, vol. 9599, pp. 471–479. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40216-1_52
Li, D.D., Liau, A.K., Khoo, A.: Player-avatar identification in video gaming: concept and measurement. Comput. Hum. Behav. 29(1), 257–263 (2013)
Makransky, G., Mayer, R.E.: Benefits of taking a virtual field trip in immersive virtual reality: evidence for the immersion principle in multimedia learning. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 34, 1771–1798 (2022)
Mayer, F.S., Frantz, C.M.: The connectedness to nature scale: a measure of individuals’ feeling in community with nature. J. Environ. Psychol. 24(4), 503–515 (2004)
Mills, T.J., Amend, J., Sebert, D.: An assessment of water resource education for teachers using interactive computer simulation. J. Environ. Educ. 16(4), 25–29 (1985)
Mori, L.: Flocking behaviour, a unity3d AI experiment (2018). http://www.lorenzomori.com/unity3d/flocking-behaviour-a-unity3d-ai-experiment
Okubo, A.: Dynamical aspects of animal grou**: swarms, schools, flocks, and herds. Adv. Biophys. 22, 1–94 (1986)
Özgen, D.S., Afacan, Y., Surer, E.: Save the planets: a multipurpose serious game to raise environmental awareness and to initiate change. In: Proceedings of the 6th EAI International Conference on Smart Objects and Technologies for Social Good, pp. 132–137 (2020)
Pooley, J.A., o’Connor, M.: Environmental education and attitudes: emotions and beliefs are what is needed. Environ. Behav. 32(5), 711–723 (2000)
Rauwald, K.S., Moore, C.F.: Environmental attitudes as predictors of policy support across three countries. Environ. Behav. 34(6), 709–739 (2002)
Rickinson, M.: Learners and learning in environmental education: a critical review of the evidence. Environ. Educ. Res. 7(3), 207–320 (2001)
Schultz, P.W.: The structure of environmental concern: concern for self, other people, and the biosphere. J. Environ. Psychol. 21(4), 327–339 (2001)
Taylor, J.: Guide on Simulation and Gaming for Environmental Education. ERIC (1985)
Wilensky, U.: Netlogo flocking model (1998). https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Flocking
Wu, J.S., Lee, J.J.: Climate change games as tools for education and engagement. Nature Clim. Change 5(5), 413–418 (2015)
Zipko, S.J.: Simulation for environmental education and awareness. Sci. Activities 17(2), 32–38 (1980)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Piliouras, S., Li, J., Dap, V.I., Arwert, I., Towns, R., Verhoef, T. (2022). Swarming as a Bird/Fish: Investigating the Effect of First-Person Perspective Simulation on Players’ Connectedness with Nature. In: Kiili, K., Antti, K., de Rosa, F., Dindar, M., Kickmeier-Rust, M., Bellotti, F. (eds) Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13647. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22124-8_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22124-8_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-22123-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-22124-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)