A pilot randomised controlled trial comparing the effectiveness of the MaTerre180' participatory tool including a serious game versus an intervention including carbon footprint awareness-raising on behaviours among academia members in France

Abstract

Background: Activities embedded in academic culture (international conferences, field missions) are an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, collective efforts are still needed to lower the carbon footprint of Academia. Serious games are often used to promote ecological transition. Nevertheless, most evaluations of their effects focus on changes in knowledge and not on behaviour. The main objectives of this study are to 1) Evaluate the feasibility of a control and an experimental behaviour change intervention and, 2) Evaluate the fidelity (the extent to which the implementation of the study corresponds to the original design) of both interventions.

Methods: People employed by a French research organisation (N = 30) will be randomised to one of the two arms. The experimental arm consists in a 1-hour group discussion for raising awareness about climate change, carrying out a carbon footprint assessment and participating to a serious game called "Ma terre en 180 minutes." The control arm consists of the same intervention (1h discussion + carbon footprint assessment) but without participating to the serious game. On two occasions over one month, participants will be asked to fill in online surveys about their behaviours, psychological constructs related to behaviour change, sociodemographic and institutional information. For every session of intervention, the facilitators will assess task completion, perceived complexity of the tasks and the perceived responsiveness of participants. Descriptive statistics will be done to analyse percentages and averages of the different outcomes.

Discussion: Ma-terre EVAL pilot study is a 1-month and a half pilot randomised controlled trial aiming to evaluate the feasibility and the fidelity of a 24-month randomised controlled trial. This study will provide more information on the levers and obstacles to reducing the carbon footprint among Academia members, so that they can be targeted through behaviour change interventions or institutional policies.

Fig 1. Procedure of the Ma Terre-EVAL pilot study since the ethics and data protection procedures to the study enrolment and beginning of the study.

Fig 2. Calendar of Ma Terre-EVAL pilot study and the measurements.

S = Session (Survey to be fill up), M = Month, IM1 = Intervention meeting with experimental and control arm. IM2 = Intervention meeting only with experimental arm. Notebook = Online survey.

Fig 3. Example of a game board from the serious game “Ma terre en 180 minutes”.

The tokens show the different sources of carbon footprint of each fictional character (e.g., travel for conferences or field missions, commuting). The bigger tokens indicate bigger carbon footprints.

Fig 4. Sources of behaviour targeted by the intervention (in the centre of the circle), intervention functions (in the intermediary part) and behaviour change techniques (in the exterior part) used for the experimental arm.

Fig 5. Sources of behaviour targeted by the interventions (in the centre of the circle), intervention functions (in the intermediary part) and behaviour change techniques (in the exterior part) used for the control arm.