Development of a Negotiation-based Serious Game in Virtual Reality to Help Teach Responsible Consumption and Production

Environmental negotiations and decision-making take place at the science-policy interface. While this is well known within academic literature, it is often difficult to convey to students how science and policy interact in environmental studies and social sciences. Negotiation simulations are an effective experimental learning tool to teach this to students. As the world is transitioning into a digital age, these negotiation situations can be simulated online in virtual environments using gamification techniques. This paper presents work on the virtual "Phosphorus Negotiation Game" (P-Game) that is currently under development at the University of Pannonia in Hungary and the University for Continuing Education Krems in Austria. The game is based on a live simulation and is now being digitalized with a frontend that is a virtual environment and a backend that is a smartphone application. In the game participants debate among themselves with prerecorded audio using rules of University Debating as a blueprint. The creation of this virtual game is presented in this paper, while also detailing the research question and measurement plan of the authors.