Games for nature: Reframing students’ perceptions through nature’s contributions to people

Biodiversity loss, driven by socio-cultural models, threatens ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Environmental education offers opportunities to promote greater appreciation of wildlife. This study explores how students from schools in northwestern Argentine Patagonia perceive native and exotic species, using the Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) framework as an educational lens to reconsider how wildlife is valued. We conducted workshops with 275 students who first classified animal species according to perceived benefits and harms. Students then participated in an educational game based on NCP principles, where building more biodiverse farms provided strategic advantages. One week later, they repeated the classification task. After the intervention, most native species were evaluated more positively. Although pre–post designs mainly capture short-term shifts in judgments, our results suggest that the NCP framework can act as a transitional lens, encouraging students to move beyond narrow utilitarian views toward more relational understandings of human–nature interdependence.