Linking serious game decisions to real-world farmer land use: a case study from the Peruvian Amazon

Tropical landscapes are largely shaped by the daily decisions of smallholder farmers. Public institutions and private companies increasingly aim to shape agricultural landscapes by influencing farmer decisions. Farmer land-use decision-making is complex and highly dynamic, especially in tropical smallholder systems. The use of serious games has been proposed as a promising research approach to understand these processes. However, it is often unclear how land-use decisions in such simulated settings relate to real life. In this paper, we explore how decisions in games made by farmers relate to their real-life decisions. We draw on a case study in Madre de Dios, Peru, where we interviewed farmers to design a game representing key components of the local farming system and external interventions. The game was played during 20 sessions involving 103 farmers. This dataset enabled the first systematic comparison in land-use serious gaming between decisions made in a game and the same farmers’ documented real-life decisions. We explored the game’s credibility, salience, and legitimacy by comparing farmer decisions in the game, including deforestation, crop choice, and participation in support programs, with those made in real life. Results show significant relations between farmers’ realities and their game decisions. The degree to which farmers receive support in real life predicts their preference for support in the game, and crop choices in real life resemble those made in the game. Cooperative membership in real life is associated with less clearing of primary forest in the game, and governmental support with larger loans. Overall, farmers found the game to be a good representation of their reality, which allowed them to discuss complex land-use decisions. We conclude that serious games can be credible, salient, and legitimate tools to explore farmer decision-making around land use, allowing exploration of the impact of present and future interventions.