A Serious Game for Changing Mindsets About Loans for Home Retrofitting

Conference paper (2020)

Authors

Olivier Dikken Student
Kushal Prakash Student
Bart Roseboom Student
Ana Rubio Student
Sander Østvik Student
M.R. Bueno Perez Computer Graphics and Visualisation - EEMCS
N. Ziliotto Salamon Computer Graphics and Visualisation - EEMCS
Rafael Bidarra Computer Graphics and Visualisation - EEMCS
Research Group
Computer Graphics and Visualisation (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2020 Olivier Dikken, Kushal Prakash, Bart Roseboom, Ana Rubio, Sander Østvik, M.R. Bueno Perez, N. Ziliotto Salamon, Rafael Bidarra
DOI
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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63464-3_33
Sustainability Serious games Persuasive games Energy finance Future time perspective Home retrofitting
More Info
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Published Date

2020

Language

English

Reuse Rights

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Intelligent Systems

Research Group

Computer Graphics and Visualisation

Abstract

Adding energy-saving products to your house can benefit the economy, the environment and your living comfort. However, these products are very costly, and many people cannot afford them using their own savings. There exist several options for funding these projects, but people do not take advantage of such due to lack of information and the common negative view on using external funding. Psychological objections on taking loans include future time perspective, perception of short time rewards and connotation of loans itself. This paper presents a serious game aimed at changing people’s mindset on taking loans to retrofit energy into their homes; Supreme Green Time Machine is a tycoon game in which you can acquire energy-saving products for your home. A main mechanic in the game is the opportunity to take loans to fund the purchase of these upgrades. Combined with other underlying mechanics, such as the time progress and social feedback, the game targets the different psychological objections to long term loans for home retrofitting. From a preliminary evaluation, we conclude that Supreme Green Time Machine effectively succeeds in making players more positive towards using loans to retrofit their homes.