Games for Knowledge Transfer and as a Stimulus for Climate Change Mitigation in Agriculture—Lessons Learned from a Game Prototype

Abstract

Transferring complex scientific knowledge into practice is challenging. This is also the case for know-how on climate change (CC) mitigation in the agricultural sector, which is held responsible for approximately 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even though numerous mitigation options at the farm level have already been identified, they still lack broad implementation. Serious games have increasingly gained attention as a medium for knowledge transfer on CC mitigation. This paper analyses if such games are also helpful for the transfer of mitigation and adaption knowledge to the actors of the agricultural sector. The paper starts with a short introduction of characteristics of serious games, and an overview of published games on CC with a focus on agriculture. It then presents a game prototype where the players act as farmers who invest a given budget into their choice of CC mitigation measures. Yet, the prototype focuses on mitigation in industrialized agriculture. It was exemplarily played by different target groups (interested lay people, stakeholders). The paper qualitatively presents lessons learned from this attempt to communicate the complex topic via a game approach. These include accounting for previous knowledge, and safeguarding of core messages. This paper might help others who are considering games as a way to communicate their findings.