OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Large-scale behavioural and social change to address the challenge of climate change may be facilitated by novel, behaviourally informed communication and education tools. In this project, we test the potential of “edutainment” through video games for fostering pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. Partnering with Sony Interactive Entertainment, we are developing a video game that includes educational elements regarding sustainable behaviour – with a focus on food-related choices. Our plan is to recruit a sample of active gamers in the U.S. and/or the UK and incentivize them to play our game. Participants will be randomized to receive access to one of five different game versions. Story, world, and gameplay will stay largely the same in all versions, but we exogenously vary the presence of environmental issues in the game, as well the type of feedback that players receive about their in-game actions – in particular, feedback may be either individual-centred or social in nature. Outcome variables will be elicited in a post-intervention survey and include measures of knowledge and attitudes regarding climate change and sustainable food choices, as well as an incentive-compatible experimental online supermarket to assess whether playing the game influences behaviour in real-world choice contexts.