An Overview Of Our Solution
Ecoed game app and Ecoed life are unique tools to tackle the immense challenge that changing human behavior in relation to climate change poses.The uniqueness and revolutionary approach of Ecoed relies in being the first environmental awareness and education initiative that combines gaming, technology, and interactivity with real life, for people of all ages. Through our tools, the connection between daily choices and habits and climate change, as well as the options available to take immediate action become accessible to everyone, and fun to engage with, making human behavioral change more possible than ever. Ecoed is also the first tool to gather big data about the detailed knowledge and likelihood of action from individuals, generating information that can be conducive to more efficient and targeted ways of tackling behavioral change micro and macro levels.
- Population Impacted: Children 9+ and adults UK and Hong Kong (initial)
- Continent: Asia
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
AWARENESS: Awareness about climate change has been measured to be approx. 40% (adult population globally). In order to gain public engagement and support for climate action, improving basic education, climate literacy and public understanding of the local dimensions of climate change are vital.
FRAMING: The way information about climate change is presented is often subject to criticism, creating a ‘future, distant, global, nonpersonal and analytical risk’ instead of a ‘present, local and personal risk’. The overwhelming statistics can appeal to the analytical mind (system 2) but in human behavioral change – considered one of the major causes of climate change - it is the more experiential, emotional and social aspect that leads the way .
GAPS IN KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION: Very little is known about the specifics of what individuals know and don’t know about their personal footprint, what information we are more willing to engage with, and which actions we are most likely to take on.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
We expect our target audience to adopt the Ecoed Life approach by,
1) Accessing our Ecoed Game App to:
• Raise awareness of how our personal and group day-to-day choices of what we buy, produce and transport ourselves, have an impact on the environment, utilizing concrete examples and very down-to-earth information
• Inspire people to take tangible, accessible actions to reduce their footprint which can be incorporated in the day-to-day urban and suburban life,
• Showcase and obtain rewards for positive action. The Ecoed game app allows for players to share the actions they have taken to reduce their footprint in social media, and to submit their own ideas of quiz questions and actions to the game app for other players to benefit from.
Additionally, we provide extended solutions such as workshops, group based Ecoed contests and advice on alternative eco-friendly products to individuals and organisations that wish to take their Ecoed culture further.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
The Ecoed game is an online app that invites players to challenge each other on 4 areas of footprint - energy, water, waste and health and wellbeing -, offering real life actions to reduce personal and group footprint, rewarding players as they increase knowledge and action.
Thus, our intervention resides in that we promote human behavioral change by:
•Making data and knowledge about the connection between human consumption habits and climate change simple to understand and fun to engage with
•Offering a comprehensive platform, accessible to anyone, with concrete, actionable items to take back to our real life for implementation
•Inviting everyone – not just experts and policy makers – to get involved and contribute to this change, rewarding active participation in submitting new knowledge and actions.
•An unprecedented understanding of the gaps in knowledge and action of individuals and communities Ecoed’s ‘big data’ will allow us to understand people’s awareness and likelihood of action at a much more detailed level, enabling targeted communication and educational actions at community and societal levels.
Gaming has become a strong tool to foster learning and behavioral change (1.2 bi. people playing games worldwide; 700 mi. gaming online ). Hence we ensure consumer adoption through accessible, simple and practical content combined with a compelling method that addresses emotional appeals, social incentives and choice architecture as key drivers of change.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
Emotional appeals: Ecoed game app allows for people to engage with climate change personally, and feel good about the actions they take whilst reducing their environmental impact.
Social incentives: Our solution allows for people to connect with their social environment and promote and share their knowledge and actions taken, rewarding such behavior with coins and points and recognizing active involvement through the game’s rankings.
Choice architecture: Ecoed presents choices to individuals within a positive, safe space – the aesthetics of the game and the Ecoed characters make the game experience a joint journey with them – so that people can easily and confidently choose what to do and what to change in their day-to-day habits.
Describe your implementation
The Ecoed game app is publicly available for download in iOS & Google stores worldwide. Our implementation plan also includes in depth market reach initially in Hong Kong and UK, where we are developing our network of partners and clients across sectors – private companies, community based organisations and educational institutions - with local representatives of Ecoed life actively developing the portfolio of organisations within which Ecoed game app and Ecoed life can be implemented. The latter includes:
-Extended services on awareness and education – such as design and facilitation of workshops, virtual and face-to-face campaigns and other interventions –
-Partnering with NGOs and governmental institutions in the design and facilitation of educational campaigns for children and young adults (current ongoing project in Hong Kong).
The factors that ensure our solution is adopted and promotes change in behavior are:
•Design – sustainability, learning and development and educational tech-solution experts work together to design the best fit-for-purpose tool -
•Accessibility – publicly available to anyone with a smartphone or tablet
•Ongoing testing – constantly engaging with people in testing and receiving feedback about the app.
Enabling conditions and key success factors: Breadth of reach, simplicity, replicability, scalability, ongoing development, and an extended platform of users to get a relevant volume of data and usage.
Obstacles: Mainly visibility and exposure. We overcome this challenge by highlighting the uniqueness of our Ecoed game app and by addressing different sectors and needs – education for schools, NGOs and community groups, a CSR/Sustainability engagement tool for organization’s employees and clients, big data and case studies on human behavioral change in the field for everyone.
External connections
Ojo Solutions: UK based technology business with extensive expertise in social impact and education.
Green Schools Project: UK based NGO focused on introducing practical environmental education in schools.
For a specific educational project currently being developed we are also partnering with the Jane Goodall Institute in Hong Kong. This project has the scope to reach over 1500 students across 75 schools in Hong Kong.
Our team of associates are well connected sustainability, industry based and education experts both in the UK and Hong Kong. For more information see https://www.ecoedlife.com/who-we-are/
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
Ecoed game app and Ecoed Life are fully developed and we are in the process of gathering the experimental evidence in each of our markets. The game has been tested and trialed with over 150 people – either face to face or online in the course of its development – showing very promising results in relation to the extent to which people incorporated the knowledge and actions provided by the app.
Our qualitative experimental evidence shows that people increase the likelihood to engage and understand information about climate change and personal environmental footprint when using our app, as well as the likelihood to take day-to-day action.
We are in the process of gathering more experimental evidence from testing the Ecoed game app with an international school in Hong Kong and are currently partnering with Jane Goodall Institute in the deployment of an educational programme on plastic waste and its impact on climate change and the environment for around 1500 students in 75 schools.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
There is a direct relationship between our solution – The Ecoed game app – and natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions in that we address and tackle the very core of the challenge, which is human behavioral change. We are still in the process of developing a large enough platform of users to measure, in more analytic and concrete ways, the extent of the impact of our solution. This will be done by analyzing the app’s big data. Once we have a significant platform of users, we will be able to assess the level of awareness and knowledge of communities per geography, age group, and even per organization, so that the data can retrofit the future communication and further educational actions taken privately or at a public level. We will also be able to understand and provide insights as to the kind of actions that need to be reinforced, and the areas of climate change and environmental impact that need to be developed further.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
The most direct benefits Ecoed game app has brought so far have been:
-Community/Social: the accessibility to everyone, of simple knowledge and practical action around personal opportunities to change individual behavior in relation to climate change and environmental footprint, made accessible through technology and through a dynamic, engaging method such as online gaming.
-Climate change and environmental education: Ecoed game app is the first tool to combine education, interactivity and real-life action in the field, making behavioural change more possible than ever before
-Economic/Sustainable development: Through our online app and work we constantly promote eco-businesses and organisations that produce and offer ecological alternatives to the conventional products and services in the market, thus contributing to the development of the green economy.
Sustainability
Our solution is high in economic sustainability in that it doesn’t solely rely on one type of funding or revenue. The breadth of possibilities to implement Ecoed game app and the Ecoed life approach involves income from grant funding, government programmes and private revenue, based on market-based clients from a wide range of sectors – from private businesses, to community organisations, schools and other related entities.-
Both the online tool and our services are versatile in that they can accommodate to the needs of different stakeholders and sectors, making it easier to find the financial stability and economic sustainability to maintain the project.
Return on investment
The development of the project, including ongoing app design and development, marketing and social media, business and client development YTD is an estimated 100.000 USD. It is still early days to compare the investment made with the results obtained so far, but our projections and forecasts indicate that the Ecoed game app and the additional interventions such as workshops, local Ecoed campaigns and other school interventions will reach a coverage of over 20.000 users by 2020.
The increasing volume of users will allow us to produce the first behavioral change reports and analysis on climate change and environmental awareness and education to be made publicly accessible by 2019 and 2020.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The solution is available to scale and replicate virtually anywhere in the world. Our experience of scalability is based on the 2 markets – Hong Kong and UK – we are currently present in.
For the full approach – including the Ecoed game app and Ecoed life services – to be replicated in another country, we would require a budget of 30.000 USD that would allow the development of a local representative in the given country/location where the solution would be deployed, as well as the technical support required to accommodate the IT needs of an extended platform of users in a different location. This does not include translation costs to a language different than English, which could result in an extra 10.000 to 15.000 USD depending on the language selected. Key local stakeholders required include representatives from the educational sector, local NGOs working on environmental education and management of local/international organisations based in the selected location.