Stakeholder engagement in sustainable tourism planning through serious gaming

Abstract

Serious gaming is an interdisciplinary and co-creative research methodology, which allows participants to proactively engage in role-playing and co-creating strategies. During the gameplay session, various game mechanisms trigger individual, social, and collective learning outcomes of the players, which in the end can lead to a change in the individual belief system towards the subject. Despite demonstrating its applicability in other complex domains, such as maritime spatial planning or urban development, an investigation into the applicability of serious games within the tourism domain is scarce. In conceiving the process of tourism planning as a strategic plan with dependent actors, resources, objectives, and challenges in a multi-layered decision-making process, creating or re-creating such strategic games can be beneficial to promote the understanding and change of belief systems among stakeholders. A particularly critically question is how serious gaming is able to generate qualitative research inquiries in order to shed more light on the complexities of the tourism destination planning process. Destination planning research can profit from new disruptive methods, such as serious gaming, for a more experimental and explorative approach in understanding the interconnectedness of tourism stakeholders, as well as estimations of short and long-term impact of decisions on a destination. By enabling strategic conversation about tourism planning issues, serious gaming functions as a strategic learning tool that provides opportunities for individual and community learning. Besides practical and conceptual implications, a set of future research avenues are provided that will enhance the qualitative research paradigm.

摘要

严肃博弈是一种跨学科的、协同创新的研究方法, 它允许参与者积极参与角色扮演和协同创新策略。在博弈设置过程中, 各种博弈机制会触发玩家的个体、社会和集体学习结果, 最终导致个体对主体的信仰体系发生改变。尽管证明了它在其他复杂领域的适用性, 如海洋空间规划或城市发展, 但对严肃博弈在旅游领域的适用性的调查很少。将旅游规划过程看作是一个多层次决策过程中的战略规划, 包括相关主体、资源、目标和挑战, 创造或再创造这样的战略博弈, 有利于促进利益相关者对旅游规划理念体系的理解和改变。一个特别关键的问题是, 严肃博弈如何能够产生定性研究调查, 以便更清楚地了解旅游目的地规划过程的复杂性。旅游目的地规划研究可以从新的颠覆性方法中获益, 例如严肃博弈, 以一种更具实验性和探索性的方法来理解旅游利益相关者之间的相互联系, 以及对旅游目的地决策的短期和长期影响的评估。通过促进关于旅游规划问题的战略对话, 严肃博弈作为一种战略学习工具, 为个人和社区学习提供了机会。除了实际应用和概念启示外, 还提供了一套未来的研究途径, 以加强定性研究范式。

Keywords:

• Serious gaming
• destination planning
• stakeholder engagement
• tourism development
• co-creative learning

关键词:

• 严肃博弈
• 目的地规划
• 利益相关者参与
• 旅游开发
• 协同创新学习

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lidija Lalicic

Lidija Lalicic an assistant professor in the Department of Tourism and Service Management at MODUL University Vienna, Austria. She graduated with distinction from MODUL’s University Vienna PhD Program in Business and Socioeconomic Sciences in the field of innovation and social media in the field of tourism. Her research interest are related to technology-enhanced tourist experiences, innovative marketing and entrepreneurial practices and stakeholder management in the field of tourism. She is a board member of the International Federation for Information Technology in Travel and Tourism (IFITT).

Jessika Weber-Sabil

Jessika Weber-Sabil is a senior researcher at the Faculty of Digital Entertainment at the University of Applied Sciences Breda under the professorship of Applied Games, Innovation and Society, where she conducts research on games with the focus on travel and tourism organizations. She holds a PhD in tourism from Bournemouth University and a Master of Arts in Management for Tourism and Innovation. Her research interests range from the application of games and new technologies in travel and tourism as a tool to explain complex realities to the evaluation of game experience in (location-based) games. She is a member of the International Federation for Information Technology in Travel and Tourism (IFITT), Digital Games Research Group (DiGRA) and the Interaction Design Foundation.