The EVIDENT serious game explores consumer behaviour in response to a malfunctioning home appliance. Specifically, it examines how consumers approach decisions to repair or replace a broken home appliance and the impact of behavioural biases on these decisions. There are two key aims addressed within the EVIDENT serious game. 1) Determine the impact of socio-demographic factors, environmental literacy, and financial literacy on consumer willingness to pay for the repair of home appliances. 2) Determine the impact of information and education mediated through a serious game on consumer in-game and real-world repair/replace decision-making.

The serious game itself is a life-simulation game in which users are tasked with maintaining their virtual home while ensuring their avatar remains comfortable (i.e. basic needs such as hunger, warmth and hygiene are met) while monitoring their financial and energy consumption. Within this game, users learn that an appliance has malfunctioned, and a repairperson is called. Users must then determine how best to proceed by entering a negotiation with the repairperson.

The experiment consists of the following sections: 1) demographic information; 2) financial literacy; 3) environmental literacy; 4) serious game. The game receives as input the replies of the participant on the demographics information section to provide a personalized gameplay experience. Replies regarding participant’s age (“What is your age?”), role (“Which of the following apply to you?”), income (“What is your household’s annual income?”), gender (“Which character would you like to play with?”) and family status (“How many people live in your home (including you) – Children”) will be used to adjust players’ avatar, starting amount of money, size of the house, age of the player and the negotiation process with the repair person.

The negotiation process differs based on the participants’ role (“Which of the following apply to you?”). In this question, the participant can choose one of the following replies: 1) I am a homeowner, 2) I am a tenant (i.e. I pay someone to rent my accommodation), 3) I am a landlord (i.e. I receive payment for accommodation from someone else). Participants who rent (2) or are landlords (3) will be assigned to an additional in-game scenario to explore the unique context in which their energy decisions are made. Random allocation to a role will be applied for participants who select multiple options (i.e., homeowners who are also landlords).

More information on the EVIDENT Serious Game Experiment can be found on the public deliverables of the EVIDENT project https://evident-h2020.eu/deliverables/. More specifically, the serious game implementation design is described in deliverable D2.3 Serious game implementation design, the design of the experiment is reported in D2.2 Optimised Protocols Design, and the experiment preparatory actions are described in D3.1 Specifications of preparatory actions for RCT, surveys and serious game and D3.2 Implementation of preparatory actions for RCT, surveys and serious game.

Finally, the EVIDENT serious game can be found in the following locations:

EVIDENT Website: https://evident-h2020.eu/seriousgame
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.CERTH.EvidentSeriousGame
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/gr/app/evident-serious-game/id6447255106
EVIDENT Platform (participation in the experiment): https://platform.evident-h2020.eu/sessions/participate_session/1560d6e6-732a-470c-807a-c70472d51c53

Cite as:Delemere, Emma, Liston, Paul, Karypidis, Paris-Alexandros, & Pragidis, Ioannis. (2023). EVIDENT H2020 – EVIDENT Serious Games Dataset (0.1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7956164