Assessing the benefits of serious games to support sustainable decision-making for transboundary watershed governance

Abstract

The overarching objective of this paper is to consider the ways that serious games could be developed in the future to maximise potential benefits in the context of governance of complex transboundary water systems. A focus is placed on the use of serious games for decision-making; as such the use of serious games for other purposes (e.g. games with a solely educational purpose), while interesting and useful, is outside the scope of this work. The Upper St Lawrence was used as a case study of a transboundary watershed to enable specific examples of the potential uses of serious games to be drawn. A review of the serious games and decision-making literature was undertaken to derive a theory framework for the way serious games might be able to support decision-making in different contexts. Following this, exploratory interviews were conducted with water resource managers across the St Lawrence region to establish whether a serious game might be useful in this particular context. Three decision-making contexts were identified in which serious games might be a useful tool: decision-making involving complex systems or significant uncertainty, decision-making involving multiple stakeholders with divergent perspectives and decision-making under time constraints. It was found that several contextual factors make the St Lawrence region a potentially viable candidate for the development of a serious game to support decision-making.

L’objectif de cet article est d’identifier dans quelles directions développer les serious games pour bénéficier à la gestion des ressources en eau transfrontalières. Un accent particulier est mis sur la prise de décision; donc l’utilisation de serious games pour d’autres buts (par exemple, pour un but éducationnel), bien qu’intéressant et utile, est hors porté de la présente recherche. La région du Haut Saint-Laurent est utilisée comme étude de cas d’un bassin versant transfrontière pour démontrer les nombreuses applications des serious games. Suite à un examen de la littérature concernant les serious games et la prise de décision, un cadre théorique est développé pour expliquer le rôle des serious games dans la prise de décision dans de multiples contextes. Par la suite, des entretiens exploratoires ont été effectués avec des gestionnaires des ressources en eau de la région du Saint-Laurent pour établir si les serious games sont un outil utile pour la prise de décisions dans ce contexte particulier. Trois contextes de prise de décision dans lesquels les serious games peuvent être un atout ont été identifiés : la prise de décision comprend des systèmes complexes ou de l’incertitude, la prise de décision comprend plusieurs acteurs de l’eau ayant des divergences de point de vue et la prise de décision sous des contraintes de temps. Il a été constaté que plusieurs facteurs contextuels font de la région du Saint-Laurent un candidat potentiel pour le développement d’un serious game comme outil pour soutenir le processus de prise de décision.

Introduction

The Great Lakes-St Lawrence basin faces a complex set of governance challenges. Jurisdiction is shared between two countries, several states and provinces, and numerous local governments (Bakker and Cook 2011), which leads to the involvement of a diverse range of stakeholders including the general public, industry, farmers, small business owners, and civil servants and politicians of various levels. The basin’s complexity and size challenge efforts to understand its dynamics, while limited interactions and disagreements between stakeholders impede management actions (IJC 2013). Such governance challenges require novel methods of encouraging dialogue, while facilitating learning and enabling systemic institutional change, so that decisions can be made from a position of shared knowledge and understanding.

Advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) offer innovative and promising solutions for enhancing social learning and collaborations to overcome these water governance challenges (Medema et al. 2014). Serious games, defined as games for a purpose other than pure entertainment that combine computer simulation with role-play as an integrated method for complex policy-making (Zhou 2014), are particularly promising as they have the potential to trigger discussion and learning among stakeholders and therefore could facilitate decision-making processes (Medema et al. 2014).

This paper considers the potential utility of a serious game for the St Lawrence Region. It has as its objectives: (1) elucidation of the mechanisms which make serious games beneficial for decision-making in different contexts; (2) analysis of the St Lawrence context to explore whether the development of a serious game might be appropriate in this case; and (3) if a serious game might be appropriate for the St Lawrence, analysis to determine which of the potential mechanisms identified through the first objective are applicable in the case of the St Lawrence. Specifically, the following research questions will be addressed:

•	What potential is there for serious games to support decision-making in water resource management?
•	What factors influence the decision-making processes currently used by water managers in the St Lawrence?
•	What are the strengths of the region’s approach to decision-making?
•	What are the challenges for decision-making processes?
•	What kind of decision-making processes are likely to be most effective in the future?
•	Would a serious game be useful to support decision-making in the region?
•	If a serious game would be useful, how would it be useful and what features might it have?

A review of the serious games and decision-making literature is undertaken to derive a theoretical framework by which to consider when and why serious games might be useful for decision-making for water resources management. Subsequent sections will use this framework to investigate decision-making in the St Lawrence context to explore whether a serious game might be useful in this particular context.

Serious games: Benefits and mechanisms

This section aims to elucidate the mechanisms which make serious games beneficial for decision-making in different contexts. Consideration is first given to the characteristics and potential benefits of serious games that might be of relevance. Discussion then turns to identification of the contexts in which serious games might be beneficially applied to support decision-making processes. The section ends by pulling together the ideas presented in the first two sections into a theory of contexts in which serious games are useful in decision-making and the mechanism through which they bring benefits.

While intuitively most people understand what constitutes a game and what does not, finding a single authoritative definition is not a simple task (for full discussion see Mayer et al. 2016). As an exact definition is elusive, the approach taken here will be to identify the range of characteristics that lead to an activity resembling a game (following Wittgenstein 1953, and a number of subsequent game scholars). Characteristics generally indicative of games include: fixed rules (Caillois 1961; Salen and Zimmerman 2003; Juul 2005); variable outcomes (Juul 2005); scoring or assigning value to the outcome of the games (Salen and Zimmerman 2003; Juul 2005); negotiable outcomes requiring player effort and attachment to the outcome (Juul 2005); subjective representation of reality (Crawford 2003); and interaction between the player and the game world (Crawford 2003).

While it is not necessary for an activity to possess all these characteristics to be classified as a game, these features have been closely associated with games, and most activities identified as games possess some of these characteristics. The identification of these characteristics will serve as a handle with which to explore the mechanisms by which games can be beneficial for decision-making as the discussion turns to the decision-making processes used in a range of contexts. A serious game is then simply taken to be a game with a purpose beyond that of pure entertainment (Abt 1970).

Serious games are a relatively new tool in water resources management, and the mechanisms through which they support collaboration over conflict have not yet been clearly mapped out. As Vegt et al. (2016) put it, ‘We know serious games can enhance collaboration but we don’t know why’ (see also Mayer et al. 2005). Connolly et al. (2012) see the lack of coherence and organisation of the serious games literature as an obstacle to understanding the effects of games and how to develop better games for specific learning outcomes. Petri and von Wangenheim (2017) point to the lack of rigour in many evaluations of serious games as a challenge to understanding when or how to use them. Two studies stand out as providing experimental evidence of the ability and means by which serious games may be useful in conflict resolution. Vegt et al. (2016) demonstrate how, by changing the rules of a game, the behaviour of players can be directed towards either conflict or collaboration. In their experiment, pairs of players are asked to play one of two versions of Breakout. The original game of Breakout involves a player moving a paddle along the bottom of the computer screen to bounce a ball towards bricks at the top of the screen and stop the ball touching the bottom of the screen. If the ball hits the bricks, they are destroyed and the player wins points; if the ball touches the bottom of the screen the player loses a life. Vegt et al. developed two scoring systems for a multi-player version of the game. In both games the players are interdependent, i.e. the actions of one affect the other. In one version of the game, players compete to hit the ball, scoring points if they reach the ball and it hits bricks. In the other, players must take it in turns to hit the ball, both scoring points if they hit bricks. Through their experiment, Vegt et al. (2016) demonstrated that they can influence players towards either competitive or collaborative behaviour by manipulating the ‘rules of the game’. They imply that this is the mechanism through which serious games may be able to enhance collaboration.

The game upon which Vegt et al. base their experiment is not controversial and this does raise the question of how applicable their findings might be in more contentious situations, such as those often found surrounding water resources decisions. Authors such as Anderson and Bushman (2001) warn that playing video games can lead to an increase in aggressive thoughts and desensitisation to violence in the real world. This seems a significant risk if serious games are utilised for water resources management, where the goal is to enhance social capital and collaboration. This negative impact of video games is disputed by Ferguson (2007), who found no link between video games and aggression in the real world, and in any case, the negative impacts are linked to violent scenes within the games. Kampf and Stolero (2014) undertook an experiment to explore the use of serious games for peace education in the highly contentious Israel–Palestine conflict. Their rationale for the potential use of games to overcome entrenched conflict originates in peace education theory. Peace education theory promotes education to achieve several goals of conflict resolution processes: facilitating parties to develop empathy for the perspectives of others, through which they may come to view opposing narratives as legitimate; encouraging parties to critically reflect on their own position, so that they come to recognise their own role in the conflict; and providing a forum where parties can develop a relationship by interacting in non-violent activities (Salomon 2011). The overarching goal of peace education is to reframe conflict narratives to resolve conflict through the promotion of trust and empathy, and the reduction of prejudice (Kampf and Stolero 2014). Kampf and Stolero (2014) experimentally tested the ability of a computerised simulation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to promote peace education in 185 Israeli undergraduate students of Jewish and Palestinian origin. They found serious games to be an effective tool of peace education, thus demonstrating the value of serious games, even in more entrenched, contentious conflict situations.

While the studies of Vegt et al. (2016) and Kampf and Stolero (2014) demonstrate the potential for serious games to support conflict resolution within a gaming environment, the critical question arises as to whether the benefits gained within the gaming environment carry into the ‘real world’. As explained by Juul (2005), computer games are half-real. Real players interact with each other according to real rules in a fictional world (Juul 2005). For Juul it is this fictional world that differentiates computer games from their more abstract, traditional game counterparts. Players must choose whether to immerse themselves in this fictional world, believing it to be true, or maintain the fictional world as a mere representation of information about the rules of the game (Juul 2005). The translation of meaning in a fictional world to meaning in the real world can be complex. Juul notes that the act of fighting another person’s character in a fictional conflict in a computer gaming environment does not equate to a desire to attack that person in real life; conversely, it may in fact be a symbolic interaction representing an invitation to friendship. As Juul puts it, ‘Humans are not always literal in their interactions, and we cannot take human games at face value. Competitive games are social affairs, and much more so than the rarely played non-competitive games that have been proposed’ (19).

This is an interesting point, because, as noted by Mayer (2009), the use of serious games for water resources management is based on the assumption that ‘individual and social learning that emerges in the game can be transferred to the world outside the game’ (825). For Mayer, this transfer is ‘negotiated and not immediate, thereby making a simulation game low in external risks and giving the players a sense of safety’ (Mayer 2009). Mayer is concerned primarily with the application of serious gaming to public policymaking, but his assertion that there is a lack of empirical evidence exploring how gaming experience impacts on the real world seems more broadly relevant. In his words, ‘we hardly seem to know what happens at the interface of public policymaking and gaming’ (826). Savic et al. (2016) have recently reviewed serious game applications developed for the water sector. Their assessment is that most of those developed to date aim to address conflict among stakeholders facing complex problems of river basin management. These games are largely simplified and require expert mediation (Savic et al. 2016). There seems to be a prevailing assumption that serious games are beneficial for resolving conflict surrounding water resources management, but a lack of understanding of the mechanisms to explain how, and why, they are useful. Questions around how accurately computer gaming environments need to represent reality for lessons learnt to translate into the real world, and how interactions within gaming environments are mapped to interactions in the real world, seem to remain unanswered.

Decision-making processes

The following paragraphs consider decision-making processes with a view to ascertaining whether serious games, as characterised above, might be of use.

Traditional ‘deductive reasoning and rational choice’ approaches to decision-making are still apparent within the natural resources literature. Take, for example, the recent book by Conroy and Peterson (2013), Decision making in natural resource management: A structured adaptive approach. The book epitomises a rational approach to decision-making, emphasising the importance of the use of rigorous, repeatable methods, and proposes a structured framework for achieving this. The essential components of the process include clear problem definition, setting of objectives, specification of decision alternatives, and delineation of the temporal and spatial boundaries of the problem. For effective decision-making using this approach it is critical that the selected objectives are measurable and reflect the overarching goals related to management of the resources. The crux of the decision-making process is the conceptualisation and quantification of the impact the decision options will have on the selected objectives. The book discusses dealing with uncertainty at length but, as the process is essentially based on deductive reasoning and rational choice, the more complete the decision maker’s understanding of the underlying systems, the more likely the decision maker is to correctly identify the optimum decision option. To be incorporated in the decision-making process, irreducible uncertainty must be quantified to a probability using statistical approaches.

The assumptions underlying this type of approach are well known and widely debated. The deductive reasoning and rational choice method arises from a positivist world view: this view holds that a single reality exists that is independent of the observer’s experience of it. By applying the scientific method it is possible to come to know the truths of that reality. It is assumed that observers applying the scientific method are capable of complete objectivity; actors are entirely rational and passive. In this mathematical and rational world, where is the place for serious games? What can they offer? It is argued here that there is little place for serious games when the world is viewed from this vantage point; they have no role to play in decision-making. If the world can be so clearly mapped mathematically, any decision can be reduced to an optimisation problem with a single most favourable solution.

There are many decisions well suited to this positivist treatment. They are those that are simple enough that the causal influences of the underlying systems are identified and understood in their entirety, and uncontentious enough that there is agreement on the objective function upon which a decision is to be taken. The problem for water resource managers is that many decisions, and arguably the most important ones, are neither simple nor uncontested. Similar challenges have been faced in other fields of research. The field of operations research (OR), which has as its raison d’être the development of quantified approaches to decision-making, had a crisis in the 1970s on the realisation that there were very limited practical applications for the deductive reasoning and rational choice theories it had previously espoused (Rosenhead and Mingers 2001). By the mid 1980s, authors such as Jackson and Keys (1984) had made significant progress towards resolving this crisis by encouraging the incorporation of a much wider range of methodologies into the OR decision-making and problem solving repertoire. In their seminal paper, ‘Towards a system of systems methodologies’, they mapped methodologies to their most appropriate context. Traditional computational (i.e. deductive reasoning and rational choice) methods were constrained to contexts of low complexity with unitary decision makers.

If it is accepted that there is little need for a game in a purely deductive reasoning and rational choice decision-making process, then attention should be turned to those contexts in which this approach either cannot or should not be applied. Generalising from the work of Jackson and Keys (1984), three broad contexts have been selected for further consideration here: (1) contexts in which a purely rational decision-making process cannot be applied due to high levels of complexity and/or uncertainty; (2) contexts in which a purely rational decision-making process cannot be applied due to time constraints on the decision-making process; and (3) contexts in which it is inappropriate to apply a purely rational decision-making process as the core assumptions of the positivist perspective do not hold true for significant dimensions of the decision-making process (i.e. where sociocultural and/or political factors are important). Each of these contexts is considered in turn below. In each case, consideration is also given to whether a serious game might be used in place of or in conjunction with rational approaches.

Decision-making under time constraints

Emergency situations are a typical example of when action is urgent and there is not enough time to fully analyse the consequences of every possible course of action. In a water resources context, emergencies might include responding to contamination events (e.g. oil spills), and flood response. How decision-making happens under time constraints has been extensively studied by researchers such as Klein (1999), who focuses much of his effort on studying particularly high-stakes decisions taken under time stress by studying, for example, firefighters and nurses. Klein pioneered a stream of research into ‘naturalistic’ decision-making, of which the central idea is that experienced decision makers are able to pick up on subtle cues and identify good courses of action without consciously going through a rational decision-making process. He calls this ‘recognition-primed’ decision-making; it is a form of intuitive decision-making employed widely by experienced professionals operating in these kinds of contexts.

Decision makers use pattern recognition to pick up on subtle cues to determine whether the situation is typical and whether it is meeting their expectations. Klein’s research participants often referred to the ‘gut feeling’ they had that something wasn’t quite right in particular situations; when Klein probed further he was often able to identify a sequence of subtle cues that the decision makers were picking up on subconsciously. Klein gives the example of a fire in a one-storey house; when firefighters arrived, all clues suggested a small fire that should be easily controlled by dousing with water. When the firefighters tried this, however, the fire did not respond as expected and the water had little effect. Feeling something wasn’t right, the firefighters left the building, and soon after the floor upon which they had been standing collapsed. It turned out that there was a major fire in the basement of the building, a basement which the firefighters did not know existed. On further questioning, it transpired that the decision maker had subconsciously noticed that the room in which they were standing was hotter than he would expect for a fire of the expected size, and quieter than normal for the amount of heat being given off.

Klein’s model integrates two major processes. In the first, decision makers size up a situation to determine whether the situation is typical or not. If it is, they are able to call on a bank of knowledge including expectations of how the situation will develop, relevant cues they should look out for (i.e. by knowing what to look out for in particular situations they are able to filter information to pay attention to what is important while avoiding information overload) and courses of action that are likely to be appropriate, and can identify reasonable goals for the situation outcome. If everything indicates the situation is typical, typical actions and responses can be implemented directly. If the situation is atypical, or if the situation analysed initially as typical begins to violate the expectations of the decision maker, the decision maker will often spend more energy on diagnosis of the situation. The process followed here is one of ‘story building’, i.e. the decision maker seeks the explanation of the situation that best matches what he/she is observing. This may have implications for whether the typical course of action is appropriate or not. If it is not, the decision maker is likely to begin mentally evaluating a range of possible courses of action. In this case the decision maker will think of a possible course of action and mentally simulate whether it will work. If it would work it is implemented (usually without further consideration of alternative courses of action, a luxury not afforded to emergency responders); if not, that course of action will be modified to work, if possible, or dropped so the decision maker can go on to think through alternatives until they identify a feasible option.

There is only one way to develop intuitive expertise, and that is through practice and experience. According to Klein (1999), ‘If we can present many situations an hour, several hours a day, for days or weeks, we should be able to improve the trainee’s ability to detect familiar patterns’ (30). Klein (1999) also notes that,

A good simulation can sometimes provide more training value than direct experience. A good simulation lets you stop the action, back up to see what went on, and cram many trials together so a person can develop a sense of typicality.

The following are of the way experts learn, as identified by Klein (1999).

• They engage in deliberate practice, so that each opportunity for practice has a goal and evaluation criteria.

• They compile an extensive experience bank.

• They obtain feedback that is accurate, diagnostic and reasonably timed.

• They enrich their experiences by reviewing prior experiences to derive new insights and lessons from mistakes.

This seems a natural use for serious games in water resources management decision-making. Oil spills, for example, hopefully occur very infrequently over the career span of any one particular water resources decision maker. Yet society would like that, if an oil spill does occur, the decision maker responds as an experienced professional. The question arises as to how decision makers are supposed to gain this experience when such events are infrequent and not the ideal time to experiment and learn the most appropriate responses. Providing a safe arena for experimentation and learning, a serious game that can simulate potential emergencies faced by decision makers could have a lot to offer. In this context, it is envisaged that the game might be based on a model of the hydrological system. The use of the gaming environment in conjunction with the rational model could bring the opportunity to expose a decision maker to a wide range of experiences that they might not otherwise be exposed to, in a relatively short space of time. In addition, game scenarios are repeatable, offering the decision maker an opportunity to test alternative responses, thus obtaining feedback that is diagnostic and reasonably timed. Games could also be recorded to aid the review of responses. To be useful in this context, games must be realistic enough in the cues the gamer receives to ensure that feedback is accurate.

Decision-making with complexity and uncertainty

Complex systems are characterised by large numbers of objects or agents interacting with each other in non-trivial ways, such that the behaviour of the system exhibits emergent phenomena that would be difficult to deduce from the behaviour of individual objects (Johnson 2006). Complex systems are often adaptive, which means that they can mutate and change their behaviour based on experience (Smith and Johnson 2006). Feedback loops in the system have a critical role to play in the production of adaptive and emergent behaviours, and mean that changes made to one part of the system can have far-reaching repercussions throughout the system. Balancing feedback loops works to maintain the system in its present equilibrium state, but if external influences (caused by a further feature of complex systems, the fact that they are characteristically open systems) pull the system too far from its equilibrium, then objects within the system self-organise into an alternative equilibrium state to avoid collapse of the system.

In theory, if a complex system could be fully understood and mathematically modelled, and all relevant variables measured, there is no reason why it would not be possible to apply a deductive reasoning and rational choice approach to decision-making to identify optimal measures for management of the system. Due to limited time, budget and/or scientific understanding, however, it is usually neither possible nor practical for the decision maker to obtain such a complete system model. For this reason, decision-making for complex system management often goes hand in hand with high levels of uncertainty.

Without the option of applying a deductive reasoning and rational choice approach, identifying a definitive optimum management approach becomes impossible and it is necessary to refine management expectations and objectives. There are several ways to refine goals and expectations to ensure they are more appropriate in such contexts. Instead of optimum solutions, one can pursue the more modest goal of identifying robust solutions, i.e. those that are expected to perform well over a wide range of possible system states (as proposed by Rosenhead 1989). Adaptability might also be a relevant goal; solutions with more flexibility to be refined in the future if not performing as desired are often preferable to those that are difficult to alter in highly uncertain contexts (Rosenhead 1989). Where decisions can be taken in incremental stages, management options remain open for longer and management approaches can be altered as the unknown future unfolds and more information becomes available. Where systems are highly complex and unpredictable, perhaps the best that can be strived for is enough understanding of the system dynamics to make it possible to steer the system away from the states that are most dangerous.

The logical question then is, how might these more modest goals be achieved? How can robust and adaptable solutions be identified? How can complex systems be steered away from dangerous states? Without the possibility of applying deductive reasoning to decision-making processes, the next best option is inductive reasoning (Arthur 1994). While the goal of deductive reasoning is to draw conclusions that must be true provided the premises upon which they are based are true, the goal of inductive reasoning is to draw conclusions that are probably true if the premises are true. Inductive reasoning is a process in which the decision maker searches for patterns within their observations upon which to draw general conclusions, and as such is about learning from experience (Li 1992). Resource managers often employ inductive reasoning processes either consciously or unconsciously; for example, each time they make a decision based on their own mental model of a system in question, or when they draw a comparison between the current problem and a problem they have seen in the past, they are doing so. How good these decisions are in the long run, will depend on how much experience the decision maker has, and how similar the experience to the question at hand. Two avenues for improving inductive reasoning processes in water resources management are proposed: (1) increasing the experience of resource managers in managing the particular systems in question could improve their mental models of the system and lead to better decision-making; (2) inductive reasoning processes are widely applied in decision-making, but usually informally; formalisation of the process to make more explicit the evidence upon which decisions are based and the degree of confidence in the general conclusions drawn could increase the legitimacy of the use of inductive reasoning and the decision produced.

Improving the (mental) models of resource managers

There are challenges for resource managers in developing and testing their mental models of the complex systems they manage. With so many factors influencing the state of the system in question, all simultaneously in flux, it is very difficult for managers to isolate and determine causal relations between different factors. The problem is compounded by time delays in action and response that further obscure these associations. In the real world, managers are faced with a wide range of different types of decision; once a decision is taken there is no guarantee that a similar decision will be faced in the near future where a different course of action can be taken and the different response of the system noted. This presents a challenge for learning from experiences and assimilating lessons learned with existing understanding. It is proposed that herein lies a possible useful application of serious games in decision-making processes for water resource management. Serious games offer a safe arena for experimentation, allowing the player to interact with the game world in a way that could support learning as necessary for inductive reasoning. A game could provide an arena in which water resources managers are able to develop and test a range of management measures and strategies based on an inductive reasoning approach. Bad decisions can be exposed in the gaming environment without serious real-world consequences.

A potential problem with this approach is that in order for the game player to test potential management approaches and build a picture of the system’s causal relations and response to those management approaches, the game world must, in some minimum critical respects, be an accurate reflection of the real world. The game, in other words, would have to be a based on a rational model of the system. Presumably, if data and understanding are lacking as required to employ a deductive reasoning and rational choice approach, this is likely to also be an issue for the development of such a gaming world.

Formalisation of the decision-making process

Serious games may have something to offer in terms of formalisation of the decision-making process. If actions and consequences can be recorded and subsequently analysed, it may be possible to justify a decision as producing the most robust and/or adaptable outcomes, treating the serious game as a laboratory for experimentation. If the game is similar enough to the real world in salient features, the game environment could be a safe arena for experimentation, allowing a trial-and-error approach to the identification of robust and adaptable solutions. The results of the experimentation could be recorded and presented as evidence of the suitability of the decision made.

Subjectivity in decision-making

The third context to be explored is when the assumptions of a positivist approach cannot be assumed to be true. As outlined above, the positivist approach holds that a world exists separate from the observer’s experience, that this world can be known through the application of the scientific method, and that humans are capable of rational and objective behaviour. To answer some questions that arise during decision-making processes, it is appropriate to apply this perspective. For example, a water resources manager concerned about the health of a river may want to know how fish populations are varying with time as an indication of whether river health is stable or in decline. Applying a scientific approach to answering this type of question is reasonable. Many questions confronting water resources managers are of a much more subjective nature, however, relating to a murkier, socially constructed reality. For the manager concerned about the health of a river, such questions might include: What parameters are most important to stakeholders for assessing the health of the river? What does the river need to score in each of these parameters to be considered in ‘good’ health?

The problem is that it is often necessary to engage a range of actors in the decision-making processes to find solutions to water resources problems. One reason for this is that water resources problems are typically multidisciplinary, and no one individual has complete knowledge of all relevant aspects of the problem (Akhmouch and Clavreul 2016). Another is that usually there is not a single person with the power to implement a decision unilaterally (Akhmouch and Cavreul 2016); to put a decision into effect, therefore, requires the agreement of a range of stakeholders. Each of these people may have a different opinion on subjective matters such as what parameters are most important, and what score might constitute ‘good enough’. At the heart of the problem lie the differing values, beliefs, expectations, experiences and assumptions that make up the perspectives of the individuals involved in the decision-making process. Each person has a different view of the problem being faced and therefore experiences, to a greater or lesser extent, a different reality from the others engaged in the process. When multiple decision makers have different perceptions of reality, the deductive reasoning and rational choice approach is difficult to apply.

A typical way forward in such cases is to abandon deductive-rational processes in favour of a negotiation process. Negotiation processes offer the advantage of not requiring a shared reality to reach an accord. In a negotiation, each participant strives for the best possible outcome for their interests using the leverage they have available to them. Not all participants are equal in a negotiation; more powerful participants are likely to have more influence over the final outcome. It cannot be guaranteed that negotiated outcomes will be either fair or optimal (Druckman and Wagner 2017). Deductive-rational approaches, on the other hand, have the advantage of providing a transparent and more objective process (if objective functions are agreed upon) for identifying the best course of action. If a shared reality among decision makers could be agreed, use of the deductive-rational approach could lead to fairer outcomes.

Echterhoff et al. (2009) assert that shared reality is ‘a product of experiencing commonality with others’ inner states about the world’. In other words, for two people to have a shared reality, they each need to be able to empathise with the situation of the other by drawing comparisons between their own experience and that of the other person. It is posited that serious games, through their ability to expose players to a situation they might not encounter in their everyday life, might have the potential to help decision makers develop this empathy. A simulation/role playing game, where decision makers play the role of other actors, could allow decision makers to experience first-hand the challenges faced by other parties and develop the empathy necessary to achieve the shared reality permitting the use of the deductive reasoning and rational choice approach to decision-making. In this case, it is imagined that a rational model would be used in conjunction with a gaming environment to help them develop their understanding of both the underlying system and the perspectives of other stakeholders.

Summary of the potential use of serious games in water resources management decision-making

The above sections set out to explore the potential benefits of serious games for decision-making in water resources management, the mechanisms by which these benefits are brought about, and the contexts in which these mechanisms apply. Table 1 sets out a summary of ideas presented in the preceding discussion, as relating to these aims.

Table 1. Summary table of benefits and mechanisms.

Water resources management challenge	Potential benefit of serious games	Mechanism by which this is achieved	Context of application
Unpredictability in the response of the system due to complex dynamics and emergent behaviours	Identification of robust solutions	Games as ‘flight simulators’ for learning to steer complex systems and ‘game out’ possible future scenarios	Decision-making when systems are complex and/or uncertainty is high
The need to reach consensus between diverse decision makers to implement decisions	More empathy of each decision maker for the perspectives of other decision makers, leading to increased likelihood of agreement and implementation of decisions	Expose decision makers to challenges facing other parties through role-playing games	Multiple decision makers with divergent perspectives facing subjective decisions
The need for decision makers to respond quickly and competently in emergency situations that arise infrequently (e.g. oil spills)	Helping decision makers develop an intuition for appropriate actions in emergency situations that increases the likelihood of an effective response	Decision makers exposed to a broad range of repeatable experiences to help them recognise cues and develop intuition to quickly assess and respond in real-world situations	Decision-making under time constraints

Decision-making in the St Lawrence context

Having identified broad theoretical contexts in which serious games might be beneficially applied to support decision-making processes, this section looks more specifically at the potential for the development of a serious game for the St Lawrence region.

Methodological approach

To analyse the St Lawrence context and explore whether a serious game might be useful in this context, exploratory interviews were conducted with water resource managers across the region. A list of the location and organisation type of each participant can be found in Table 2. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews (Robson and McCartan 2016) were conducted with 14 participants, and informal unstructured interviews (Robson and Mc Cartan 2016) were conducted with a further four. The sample size is small but justified on the basis that the study is exploratory in nature. The aim of the research is to establish whether there may be potential for the use of a serious game for the region that would support a much broader second phase of work. Of the 14 participants interviewed in depth, seven work in Quebec, five in Ontario and two in the United States. All hold a role within a local, national or bi-national, governmental or non-governmental organisation that takes decisions with implications for management of the St Lawrence River. Participants were asked questions broadly related to the nature of decisions they took, their approach to decision-making, challenges and opportunities for collaborative decision-making and the future threats they envisage for the region.

Table 2. Characteristics of interview participants.

Participant no.	Location	Organisation
1	Vermont	Transboundary non-governmental organisation
2	Ontario	Non-governmental organisation
3	Ontario	Bi-national governance committee
4	Quebec	Governmental organisation
5	Quebec	Non-governmental organisation
6	Quebec	Non-governmental organisation
7	New York State	Non-governmental organisation
8	Ontario	Non-governmental organisation
9	Ontario	Non-profit organisation with governmental mandate
10	Ontario	Non-profit organisation with governmental mandate
11	Quebec	Non-governmental organisation
12	Quebec	Non-profit organisation with governmental mandate
13	Quebec	Non-profit organisation with governmental mandate
14	Quebec	Non-governmental organisation
15	Ontario	Non-governmental organisation
16	Quebec	Bi-national governance committee
17	Ontario	Bi-national governance committee
18	Ontario	Non-governmental organisation

While the interviewer went into the interview with a list of topics to discuss, the interviews were intended to be exploratory and therefore great flexibility was afforded to the interviewer to follow interesting avenues of discussion, and interviews often departed significantly from the planned schedule.

Factors influencing the decision-making processes in the St Lawrence

While speaking with water resources managers across the region, two factors were identified that have implications for decision-making processes: the need to justify decisions subsequently to external parties (e.g. funding bodies), and, in the context of decisions involving multiple stakeholders in conflict, the need to present the decision-making process as fair and unbiased.

Participant 6 held the view that regardless of the decision-making process employed, when it comes to presenting the decision-making process externally, it is important to present the decision as rational. This is particularly true when dealing with funding bodies and big institutions. Presenting the processes as rational is viewed as necessary to ensure the legitimacy of the final decision, making the decision justifiable and defensible. This participant explained why it is so important to be able to defend every decision made, saying,

I’m so used to working with so much red tape; everything has to be approved by everybody… I don’t own the land, I don’t take care of the land, I need to get the city’s approved, I need to get the environmental approval.

Interestingly, it was clear this participant felt it was the perception of rationality that was important; the participant went on to say that the final decision ‘can come from an irrational perspective, but we have to present it to them in a rational way so that they can approve it’. This quote implies a mutual understanding between those seeking approval and those able to grant it, that the employment of rational discourse is a socially constructed normality in this context.

The same participant made the point that rationality, due to its association with scientific objectiveness, could be usefully employed in decision-making contexts where conflict was a factor. Providing an example of a conflict in the region, this participant explained how different stakeholders each had a different idea about who was to blame and what the most appropriate solution was to a particularly sensitive issue at hand. In this example, a limited number of riverine property owners were suffering from sediment build-up in front of their properties, which was leading to excessive plant growth, which in turn was restricting their river access and correspondingly decreasing their property value. The cause of the sediment accumulation was debated, with some suspecting modifications to a nearby public dock were either partially or fully to blame. Participant 6 described how,

nobody had the same perspective at all. We had to somehow peel the issues, peel away all the layers so that everybody understood all of the fundamental, scientific issues and data, nobody could refute it. Everybody knew what the true causes were, everybody knew what the potential solutions were and from there we had to determine where we wanted to go with that.

The decision involved agreeing what action should be taken, and who should pay for it. In this example, a rational approach was used to define the problem and agree the basis upon which the decision was to be taken. Using rationality to overcome conflict regarding decisions makes a lot of sense in theory as emotions have no place in rational decision-making; reducing decision-making to rational logic, therefore, can take the emotional heat out of potential conflict situations.

The problem with this approach is that it is not always possible to eliminate all values and emotions from decision-making processes. In the example above, rationalisation alone was able to resolve the conflict as value judgements did not seem to be a significant feature of the dispute. There was broad agreement between parties regarding what would constitute a desirable solution (everyone agreed that there was a problem, that implementing the solution should be paid for by the party responsible for causing the problem, etc.) The disagreement was regarding what was causing the problem, and this could be resolved through scientific inquiry. Fortunately, the natural processes involved were well enough understood and occurring on a small enough scale that a full explanation could be found, and this explanation could be understood by everybody. When facing conflict over more complex issues, it can still be useful to increase understanding of the problem at hand, but it is not possible to be fully objective in decision-making. Values often have an important role to play, particularly in the selection of criteria upon which solution options will be evaluated. For example, in a previous study (Furber et al. 2016) it was found that despite the significant effort put into trying to achieve shared understanding of the consequences of water level fluctuations (or lack of them) on a range of social and ecological systems, this did not lead to full resolution of conflict. Despite efforts to employ an objective and rational decision-making process, values and emotions remained significant due to disagreement regarding the relative importance of environmental versus socioeconomic solution assessment criteria.

Strengths of the region’s approach to decision-making

Regardless of the external constraints on decision makers across the region, the ability of local actors to find ways to implement their decisions was identified by some participants as a real strength of the region’s decision-making process. As Participant 8 put it, ‘It’s not going to make anyone super happy at the really high levels, but people are starting to take back the decision-making’. This participant described the way that their organisation was working with grant writers to obtain funds, when a few years ago local actors would sit back and watch the ‘big guys’ do it. Now this participant’s organisation is applying for international grants so that projects can be truly international. Participant 1 spoke about the way that their organisation had received a large international grant that they were able to use on cross-border projects. For this participant, the advantages of local decision-making included a more flexible approach, more local knowledge, and an increased ability to engage with diverse local actors on both sides of the border. Participant 7 described how their non-governmental organisation (NGO) had been able to influence regional decision-making by engaging with municipalities along the river and campaigning (successfully, in one notable example) for the municipalities to pass resolutions. With each municipality passing the same or similar resolutions, it was possible to encourage a more united approach to water management issues.

The engagement of local actors brings the benefit of a wealth of local knowledge being fed into decision-making process. The diversity of knowledge amongst local actors was clear during the interviews; with each interview, the authors gained a vantage point of the St Lawrence from a new perspective. Perspectives varied according to the participants’ background (participants came from a range of political, scientific and social science disciplines), their political jurisdiction, social and cultural affiliations, and primary language. It was apparent in some of the interviews that the local actors are themselves aware of, and highly value, the diversity of knowledge in the region. The value of First Nations’ knowledge was spoken of on more than one occasion. Participant 8, for example, said, ‘I get a lot of good advice from my Mohawk colleagues, because they are very into the environment, they know what the issues are and I’m very fortunate to be in a network that embraces that voice’. Likewise, Participant 18 spoke of the way their organisation is incorporating First Nations knowledge into their planning approach. This participant gave the example of using a First Nations definition of landscape, which they described as more intuitive, with less emphasis on zoning or lines on a map. They also spoke of the way they were working to incorporate First Nations values into their planning, by placing their focus on the protection of traditional food sources (as contrasted with a more typical NGO discourse, which might talk in terms of endangered species, etc.).

Diversity of knowledge is most useful in decision-making when many perspectives are brought together and balanced through effective collaboration. Some participants reported examples of good collaboration, and high levels of engagement of influential individuals, occurring at the local level. Participant 8, while describing a meeting to collaborate on a local project, said, ‘I was thinking as I sat around the table while we were talking. I realised how well connected each individual is’. Participant 5 spoke of how open the NGOs across the region were to collaboration, saying, ‘myself personally, I’ve never found the doors closed between the NGO community from the various regions’. Participant 6 reported that there is a lot of interesting collaboration occurring between sectors; lots of consultation and citizen participation occurs on issues, with people who run municipalities, industry actors, etc. In one example, an organisation on the Canadian side of the river had decided to apply for funding for a river clean-up project. Having successfully won funding, they decided that, for the project to be a success, both sides of the river needed to be tackled and so they decided to share the funding with their partners on the US side of the border. According to Participant 8, who described the project, ‘it was a phenomenal experience; they had 100 children clean up and work on their side [US] in a sensitive wetland’.

The participant contrasted the benefits of this local approach against the international approach to remediation of the river taken in the past. The participant described how different approaches, personalities and policies of the US and Canadian sides of the river had in the past led to decisions on each side of the river being taken in isolation. The participant cited the example that, while the US side of the river opted for a policy of dredging contaminated river-bed sediment from the tributaries of the St Lawrence in the Massena area in the 1990s, the Canadian side (facing the same problem) opted to leave the contaminated sediment in situ and allow natural sediment to form a cap over the contaminated sediment over time (the same example was also referred to by Participants 9 and 10). The river clean-up project described above shows how local-level actors can surpass some of the transboundary barriers to collaboration at the international level. Other participants also spoke of the way that the region is benefitting from the increasing role of local actors, and efforts to enhance local collaborative networks were identified through the interviews. Participant 15 spoke of an exciting initiative to enhance participation using ‘Weavers’, individuals selected from key organisations who are tasked to dedicate some of their working week to strengthening the region’s network by creating and supporting new connections and collaborations.

Challenges for decision-making processes

While many advantages of local actors’ ability to implement decisions were identified, Participant 3 raised the point that this also presents a challenge for decision-making. This participant saw local actors’ tendency to take a local perspective as a challenge for cohesive management of the watershed as a whole. The participant said,

I think that’s where there’s a bit of a disconnect and where there could be more emphasis to try to better engage municipalities and regional governments, to provide an opportunity for them to appreciate… how the actions of the municipalities and the regional governments really do drive Great Lakes and St Lawrence River water quality conditions….

Similarly, while examples of effective transboundary collaboration were identified on a local scale, several participants identified transboundary collaboration on a regional scale as problematic. Participant 6 asserted that, regionally, ‘There’s no cross-border decision-making…. We know that a lot of the same issues are going on in different municipalities along the river and they are all trying to deal with it alone, when often it’s a regional problem’. The participant gave the example of Lake St Francis, where water levels are kept consistent and this has led to a sediment accumulation problem in certain areas (always the same areas). This leads to mass growth of aquatic plants and citizens are affected as they can no longer access the water. According to this participant, this is happening in many localised spots around the lake. Collective solutions could increase the effectiveness of solutions, but because the affected areas are in multiple jurisdictions, no cohesive action is being taken. As explained by the same participant, often the problem is just identifying who to speak to: ‘We don’t know who to talk to, we don’t know who to get in touch with, or what exists’. Participant 8 made a similar point regarding the challenge of knowing who to speak to; this participant explained that ‘It’s trying not to forget who is out there; that is a bit of a challenge…. It’s communication that is a challenge’. Participant 5, when asked what collaborative structures are being used to facilitate transboundary water management, simply said, ‘Next to none’. Participant 15 was engaged in a project to map the collaborative network in the region and they shared the opinion that transboundary collaboration was not occurring as effectively as it might. Their research suggested that there are good connections on each side of the border, with fewer transboundary connections.

The challenge for local actors to collaborate on a regional scale to achieve cohesive policy and action is perhaps not surprising given the geographic size and complexity of the St Lawrence watershed. On a practical note, participants described the way that regional meetings have become a challenge in the area, with many stopping altogether following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States. One participant described how, prior to 9/11, the US and Canada had had a collaborative programme in place called Fast Line. Representatives from both jurisdictions had met on an international island in the middle of the St Lawrence to discuss water resources management, an initiative that had led to projects occurring on both sides of the border that mirrored one another. Since 9/11, however, border crossings have become more difficult and this initiative has subsequently stopped. Participant 3 explained how, in their experience, the larger the scale of planning efforts, the more challenging it becomes to engage the relevant stakeholders and the more difficult it is for individual stakeholders to relate their interests to the issues being discussed.

Patchwork regulations, policies and funding were also identified as further compounding the problem. Participant 6 spoke of issues related to shoreline regulations, discussing the resentment and confusion that have been caused in the past when their organisation has tried to instigate environmentally friendly policies that obligate residents to undertake potentially more expensive measures to protect the shoreline, while their neighbours do not have to as they are on the other side of the municipality border and adjacent municipalities do not require it. For this participant, implementing decisions was harder than it should have been due to the jurisdictional boundaries. Participant 2 provided an example of the different status of the American eel in Ontario and Quebec to illustrate the challenge of patchwork regulations. For this participant, the status of the American eel as endangered in Ontario but not Quebec leads to disjointed management approaches. Restoration efforts are undertaken in Ontario but then the eels may swim downstream to Quebec where they can be caught by people who fish.

Given the scale and diversity of the watershed, it is perhaps not surprising that divisive issues were identified by Participant 7 as a major challenge for the region. This participant spoke of their relationship with another organisation in the region, with closely aligned perspectives on all but one issue. The bad relationship between these two organisations following conflict on the one divisive and sensitive issue, however, has led to a situation where it is highly unlikely that these two organisations will collaborate in the future. Discussing decision-making when issues are contentious, Participant 1 asserted that there is a lack of political will to tackle the harder decisions. When asked whether the stakeholders possessed the political will to facilitate collaborative decision-making, this participant said,

I’m going to be blunt. They are short on political will to make hard decisions. There’s plenty of political will to make easy decisions. They know the process of collaborative decision-making and implementation and we’re very good at doing it and following it up for things that don’t challenge the political realities in a jurisdiction.

A number of other notable challenges were identified through the interviews. Participant 5 observed staff turnover in governmental jobs seems to be greater today than it had been in the past. This participant explained,

The way I see government evolving is not like it used to be. We used to have career people going into government. Now we have a new generation coming into government that are not, I find, attached for really long.

The same participant also found the short-term focus of politicians, a consequence of their four-year term in power, presents a challenge for collaborative decision-making. The influence of well-financed, powerful players over regional water management was cited by Participant 6 as a big challenge. Hydro Quebec, for example, was reported to have given funds for projects in the St Charles River area to local municipalities in return for their signing a contract that prohibited them speaking up against the company or its installations for a 25-year period. There have subsequently been issues with water levels in the area, as water is diverted through the Beauharnois Canal to Hydro Quebec installations. Unable to speak up, the municipalities’ ability to manage the local environment and water level for access was severely hampered.

A final challenge identified by two participants is the need to engage young people across the region in water resources management. As Participant 9 put it,

I think one of our greatest challenges that we are trying to overcome, is not so much diversity in terms of ethnic background or European versus First Nations, for example, but age. We tend to get a much older crowd coming out to our events. We really miss the kids and the younger generations. In terms of engaging younger people in our work, that’s an area of growth that we need to focus on.

Participant 3 talked about the ‘good old days’ of environmental activism in the 1960s and 1970s, lamenting the fact that people today ‘just don’t seem as inclined to become engaged in issues related to the lakes and the river’.

The changing nature of decision-making

There was a notable feeling amongst water resources managers that the nature of decision-making across the region was changing. One participant compared resource management in the region today to firefighting, contrasting this against the past, which he described as ‘business as usual’. He said that,

We don’t really know what is coming our way, it just seems like every year we are under threat by a new challenge…. The only lesson you can take from it is to be adaptable. Not only with where the money is coming from, but also with the latest firefight of the day. You try to be proactive and deal with the long-term issues, but there is always going to be a firefighting aspect.

The use of the term ‘firefighting’ in reference to water resources management implies that decision makers across the region today perceive an increasing urgency in their decision-making process. This is interesting because, as discussed above, different forms of decision-making processes tend to be appropriate in different contexts. Urgency in decision-making presents a challenge for employing a deductive reasoning and rational choice approach, and could signal the need for novel tools to be developed that support a more intuitive approach.

Climate change was often spoken about during the interviews, with the related issue of invasive species, a major cause of concern across the watershed. Some participants spoke of the way that, while in the past climate change seemed something distant, a concern of the United Nations (UN), now the impacts were being felt in the region. Climate change was perceived to be a root cause of the changing nature of water management, from ‘business as usual’ to ‘firefighting’ the latest ecological threat. The point was made that, while the issues being experienced were new to water resources managers in the region, they were often commonly experienced in other parts of the continent or the world. An example is the spreading of invasive species; participants spoke of emerald ash bore coming up from Michigan, ticks moving up from New York State, and wild parsnip coming in from elsewhere in Quebec. One of the key strengths of the region’s decision-making process, as highlighted above, is the wealth of knowledge about the local environment that can be employed in decision-making processes. Climate change moves the locus of relevant knowledge out of the watershed and necessitates knowledge sharing on a more global scale for effective decision-making.

A serious game for the St Lawrence Region

Three situations were identified above where it might be beneficial to employ a serious game to support decision-making processes. These are when it is not possible to employ a deductive reasoning and rational choice approach to decision-making: (1) due to the complexity and uncertainty involved in the underlying system; (2) due to time constraints and urgency to act; or (3) because of subjectivity and different perspectives surrounding how to parameterise the decision-making problem.

Speaking with managers across the St Lawrence Region has allowed the identification of elements of each of the above situations as present in the St Lawrence decision-making context. The St Lawrence River system is certainly complex. While the interviews revealed that some problems are localised enough to be addressed using a deductive reasoning and rational choice approach, many other problems are not. Some decisions tackled in the region do need to be taken urgently. An obvious example is when an incident, such as a ship grounding, leads to contamination of the river. Decisions must be taken quickly about how to contain the contaminant and minimise environmental damage without undue risk to those tasked to contain the spillage. More subtly, the region’s water resources mangers reported that the nature of decision-making in the region is changing from ‘business as usual’ to ‘firefighting’. This hints towards an increasing urgency in decision-making in general, and implies a possible potential use for serious games to support decision makers take effective decisions more intuitively.

Lastly, the diversity of perspectives of stakeholders in the region, whilst one of the greatest strengths for decision-making, presents a challenge for deductive reasoning and rational choice approaches. With multiple jurisdictions in the region, the need to build consensus as to the best course of action is an unavoidable feature of decision-making. Subjectivity in the decision-making process is inevitable. An example of such a problem was provided by Participant 8. The St Lawrence River, in the area around Massena, New York, and Cornwall, Ontario, was designated as an Area of Concern (AOC) under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1987. This designation was due to high levels of contamination, including heavy metals such as mercury. The contamination has led to many beneficial-use impairments, including limitations on the consumption of fish. This use impairment impacts particularly strongly on the Mohawks of Akwesasne, who rely on the fish as a major part of their diet. Contamination levels in the area and fish have greatly improved and there is now a push from some actors to declassify the area as an AOC. The Mohawks of Akwesasne, according to Participant 8, are strongly against this. They believe contamination levels in the area are still too high, and fear declassification will lead to a loss of momentum for improving the local environment.

Underlying this decision of whether to declassify the AOC is a value judgement regarding what level of contamination is acceptable. The acceptable level of contamination is dependent upon whether the goal is to maintain an attractive environment, support biodiversity or ensure fish are safe for human consumption. The quantity of fish consumed by any one individual is a factor if human consumption is a goal. This is an example of a decision that could possibly be supported with a serious game. The goal of the game would be to reach consensus as to an acceptable contamination threshold, or a conclusion about whether the river should be declassified as an AOC. Such a game might build on the strengths of the region, such as the engagement of local actors, the diversity of knowledge present in the region and the value many actors place on the knowledge of other actors. The game could be designed to help actors broaden their understanding and framing of the problem, with the goal of a more holistic and cohesive approach to action.

It is therefore postulated that there is potential for the use of a serious game to support decision-making in the St Lawrence Region.

On the basis of the exploratory interviews with resource managers across the region, it may be beneficial if the game has the following features:

•	The process through which any decisions are reached should be transparent as it is important that the decision can subsequently be justified to external bodies such as funding agencies;
•	Where multiple stakeholders are engaged in a decision-making process that is potentially contentious, it is important that the game is designed so that players recognise it as fair and unbiased;
•	It is difficult for stakeholders from across the region to physically meet in one location, so consideration should be given to whether it is necessary to meet in person or whether the game can be played remotely;
•	A game that supports or enables knowledge sharing could be highly beneficial for the region. There is a wealth of knowledge within the region that could beneficially be shared between actors and the region could increasingly benefit from access to knowledge from outside the region;
•	With the trend towards decentralisation of decision-making to lower levels, it would be useful to develop a game targeted to local-level decision-making;
•	It would be beneficial if a game helped to engage younger volunteers;
•	The region suffers from the presence of divisive issues; a game that helps to develop empathy for the perspective of a variety of actors in the region could be beneficial.

Conclusions

Several contextual factors make the St Lawrence region a viable candidate for the development of a serious game to support decision-making. (1) Uncertainty is inherent in decision-making processes in the St Lawrence region due to the complexity of underlying physical, social, environmental and political systems. In such a context, a serious game could be beneficially used to help managers identify robust solutions, using a gaming environment like a flight simulator (i.e. a safe environment) with which to test alternative management solutions. (2) For decisions to be effective in the St Lawrence Region it is often necessary to reach consensus amongst a wide range of stakeholders who hold a multiplicity of perspectives. A serious game could be developed that would help actors gain first-hand experience of the perspective of and challenges facing other actors. This could help develop empathy that leads to an expanded problem definition and facilitates the identification of decision outcomes that can be supported by a wider range of actors. (3) The changing nature of decision-making in the region, from that characterised as ‘business as usual’ to ‘firefighting’ the latest problem, suggests that decision makers are experiencing an increasing urgency to act. This could lead to a greater role for intuitive decision-making processes, which might beneficially be supported by a serious game to expose decision makers to a wide range of relevant experience quickly, thus enabling them to practice and refine their ability to respond appropriately. These context factors are not unique to the St Lawrence, and the same mechanisms may mean serious games could be applicable in a broad range of similar contexts.

Acknowledgements

The research team gives thanks to all the interview participants who took the time to contribute valuable knowledge and opinions to this article. This study was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant held by Prof. Jan Adamowski, and contributed to by Prof. Van Nguyen from the McGill University Brace Centre for Water Resources Management.