Unlocking sustainable lifestyles: The potential of serious games in reducing household carbon footprints

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The climate crisis demands immediate changes in current consumption, with private households emerging as key actors. Private households are defined as households where individuals or groups of people living together make their own daily consumption and lifestyle decisions. This study investigates how a gamified approach, the Climate Puzzle, can activate households to test sustainable lifestyle strategies. It further examines both the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potentials and the constraints households face in implementing these strategies. Using a mixed-methods approach within a German case study (n=34 households), this research integrates life cycle assessments, semi-structured interviews, and gamification (Climate Puzzle) to activate households to test sustainable lifestyle strategies over a 3–8 weeks period. Results indicate that short-term changes, such as adopting vegetarian diets, can reduce household carbon footprints by 13% on average. A scenario analysis reveals that long-term measures, including infrastructure improvements (e.g., enhanced cycling infrastructure or public transport in suburban areas), can increase the reduction potential to 41%. Gamification proved effective in motivating households to experiment with sustainable behaviours. However, this remains insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement's targets. Constraints occur at multiple levels: micro-level factors such as preferences and habits, as well as meso- and macro-level constraints including infrastructure availability and legal frameworks (e.g., taxation). These findings highlight that households alone cannot drive sustainable transformation. Similarly, there is a need for further research to examine the relationship between individual actions and legal and infrastructural frameworks in more depth.