Gamified Emissions Through the Wisdom of Crowds

Social awareness of carbon emissions has come to the forefront more than ever within the last five years. The effects of global warming present one of the greatest epistemic environmental threats of our age. While CO2 emissions have returned to slower growth rates, with a pronounced slowdown between 2014 and 2016 in the USA and European Union, the growth in China/India specifically and most developing nations has dominated global trends for the past 20 years. Contributing to the continued growth of CO2 emissions is the implied correlation between higher levels of economic activity and the requisite use of non-renewable resources (e.g. coal, oil and gas) all resulting in more emissions. Much of the contributors to increased CO2 emissions are linked to conversion of raw material into economic outputs specifically for energy with trade openness’ creation of movement of goods and services across borders, coupled with modern technologies and managerial philosophies contributing further. While there has been much social activism regarding the need to create a global plan for CO2 emissions, the degree of traction remains relatively negligible. A wide degree of policies, programs and projects aimed at attempting to address global climate change, its drivers and impact have emerged to create the requisite social and institutional conditions to adapt to climate variability, risk and its future impact. The question becomes how to create/increase the requisite positive behaviors needed to enable significant behavioral change regarding carbon emissions. In this chapter, we explore the potential of gamified approaches to incentivize carbon emission reduction with an aim to create sustainable practices. The approach first reviews the current landscape around CO2 and climate change, followed by examples of gamification utilized in behavioral context to increase awareness and an examination of the motivational aspects of gamification, its characteristics and benefits. The chapter closes with proposed approaches to support carbon emission reductions and create sustainable awareness of climate change issues through a conceptual gamification toolkit built on the wisdom of crowds to aid development of a CO2 gamification framework for sustainability and social responsibility.