Consensus Building Gaming Which Promotes Creative Solutions to Wildlife Management Dilemmas

Abstract

Background. Wildlife management is becoming a more challenging problem throughout the world. One of the main difficulties it encounters is that residents tend to have ambivalent attitudes regarding whether wildlife should be eliminated or conserved. Aim. We made a consensus building gaming scenario for promoting creative solutions to wildlife management dilemmas. In this article, we aim to show the prerequisites for high performance of this gaming. Method. The gaming consists of three phases: a game playing phase, a presenting dilemma phase, and a game remodeling phase. The game playing phase consists of playing the game which is based on the actual wildlife management problem in Japan. Players can learn the difficulties of real wildlife management from the perspective of farmers. In presenting the dilemma phase, they are presented with the dilemma structure of wildlife problems and motivated to solve the dilemma. In the game remodeling phase, the players remodel the played game to design a new society wherein the residents can coexist successfully with wildlife. The remodeling phase is a kind of well-constructed debriefing process. With this game remodeling process, players can use their creativity for consensus building. Results. The gaming society functioned well especially for players with high pragmatic attitudes or those good at generating ideas especially through talking with others. Conclusion. The prerequisites for high performance of this gaming were verified. But further research is necessary for producing creative consensus building theory and objectively evaluating the quality of players’ ideas.