Gamification: A novel approach for facilities manager to foster energy-saving behaviour

Abstract

The continuous growth of world energy consumption has caused environmental problems and consequently, resulted in growing needs to reduce energy consumption. This growing need is now becoming the concern of the profession of facilities management to manage the buildings' energy effectively as buildings contribute to a considerable amount of world energy consumption. The installation of energy efficient appliances has been seen as an important strategy in energy-efficiency management and of course, its contributions in energy-saving are undeniable. However, the efficient use of energy among the occupants is also important in offering substantial contribution to the energy-saving capacities of modern technology. There are many behavior intervention tools suggested as effective in facilitating and engaging energy-saving behavior among the occupants. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the barriers to behavior change are complex because behavior is dependent on many factors such as individual, psychological, social and cultural. Gamification is an emerged concept where, it uses the game design elements, characteristic for games, in non-game contexts. It intends to enhance engagement of the individuals either with a product or motivate particular user behavior, through the use of game elements. Previously, it has been applied to motivate students towards learning and make the learning process more attractive. Besides, it also has been applied to mobile application to present orientation information in engaging way. In today, the facilities managers tend to face the problem around occupants' motivation and engagement on energy-saving behavior, yet gamification concept could provide an opportunity for the facilities managers to solve this problem. This paper proposes the application of gamification concept in fostering the energy-saving behavior among the buildings' occupants. The potentiality of the application of gamification in fostering energy-saving behavior among the occupants should be considered by the facilities manager as it could make the fostering process more meaningful to the individuals.