Empowering Energy Conservation in Buildings Through Gamification: Insights from Diverse Applications

Energy shortages, high energy prices, and environmental problems associated with the rising energy consumption are global concerns. Particularly, buildings are among the major contributors to the total energy consumption. The energy consumption of a building largely depends on how its users utilise the energy. Energy-saving campaigns, a common initiative aimed at fostering behavioural change among users, are less effective due to a lack of motivation. Therefore, this paper studies a behavioural change intervention – Gamification, to encourage energy conservation behaviour among building energy users. In this paper, a review of various empirical studies is conducted to study the application of gamification in promoting behavioural change in different contexts and propose a variety of game design elements that could be adopted for fostering energy conservation behaviour among building energy users. Data collection is conducted on Web of Science and SCOPUS, and the final set of 32 eligible papers for this review is determined by applying several layers of eligibility criteria assessments. The overall findings indicate that gamification has substantial potential when applied in the context of energy conservation and identify 20 game design elements for consideration in further implementations. This paper offers new insights for stakeholders on the application of gamification in fostering energy conservation behaviour, serving as a guideline for future researchers on the available game design elements that can encourage energy conservation behaviour among building energy users.