The affection of gamification’s factors towards pro-environmental behavior of university students: a future direction for integrating gamification in green campus

Abstract

Sustainability is not a new topic in the literature extent; however, with the extreme need to conserve and protect in the adversary's time of environmental crisis, more research is encouraged to investigate the novelty methods to narrow down the gap between cognitive and behavioral of humankinds. A growing number of research on environmental issues just stated the phenomenon or crisis related to the up-to-date environment as a way to alarm and educate people, few research emphasizes the methods along with them practicing the environmental protecting behaviors. Given the above void, this research will concentrate on the gamification in the pro-environmental behaviors as a new suggestion for users to not only enhance their knowledge about the environment but also create a subconsciously practical environmental conservation. Developing from the construal level theory (CLT), this research will test the psychological distance between the gamification factors and pro-environmental behaviors with the mediating roles of environment attitudes. This study is conducted in Vietnam, with 350 valid surveys via Google Form and later analyzed through the use of apps SmartPLS. After analyzing the data set, gamification’s factors overall have a direct effect on the pro-environmental behaviors, except for feedback. This finding enables conservationists, environment-enthusiast to leverage this method to reduce the ecological footprint.