Using serious games for (social) engagement in vision development for circular business parks

In order to support transition to a circular economy, visions and strategies need to be developed for which participatory backcasting can be used. This paper reports on the effects of using serious games as a possible supporting (social) engagement and design tool for vision development in participatory backcasting and has been applied to circular business and industry parks. In order to test the effects on (social) engagement, a new framework was developed and used to evaluate engagement by measuring the game experience, perceived influence, and learning, as well as the social connections within these constructs. The effect of the vision design was measured using participant satisfaction and a vision analysis, identifying transformative elements and guiding goals and targets. The results show that a serious game is a suitable tool to support (social) engagement in participatory backcasting. As a design tool, it is suitable for the development of transformative elements, but the used game was not able to create guiding goals and targets.