Ethical Thinking and Sustainability in Role-Play Participants

Purpose. Can games provide a holistic understanding of the ethical decision-making process related to sustainability and environmental management? Method. Thirty participants, 18 to 34 years old, were recruited. Twenty were then randomly assigned to play a popular role-playing game, which raises an issue of whether to drain or preserve a virtual lake . Ten participants were assigned to a control condition, which involved a written version of the lake dilemma. Using a researcher-developed coding scheme, this study compared the ethical thinking skills and thought processes used to approach the lake scenario . Findings. Control condition participants more frequently chose to drain the lake than game condition participants. The top-ranked thought processes used by the control condition participants were reasoning -related only, whereas the top-ranked thought processes used by the game condition participants were both reasoning - and empathy -related, which may have related to their greater likelihood to preserve the lake. While, most game participants chose to preserve the lake (75%), game participants chose the “negative†choice in this scenario more often than any other (non-sustainability related) scenario provided in the game. Implications. This study helps us to understand how people think through sustainability-related scenarios, and how to use games for policy making and education.