The Road to Flourishing – Can we drive strongly sustainable business intention through a game-based tool?

Abstract

Business action for sustainability is still mostly limited to ‘weakly sustainable’ activities that do not significantly change the way of doing business and only decrease negative environmental and societal impacts of doing business to a limited extent. Strongly sustainable business creates positive environmental, economic and social value and operates within the boundaries of the planet. Tools to help companies transform to this paradigm are still lacking. This research developed and tested the game-based tool “The Road to Flourishing”. The tool aims to raise knowledge and change intended behaviour of business sustainability. The tool evaluation used a Theory of Planned Behaviour lens to understand whether the game play could change players' attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioural control, intended behaviour, and knowledge of business sustainability. A pre-post-survey was filled in by 220 participants with background in academia, business, business studies and consultancy. It was evaluated using t-tests to find potential changes due to the gameplay. Statistically significant differences were observed in players' knowledge levels and some components of intended behaviour but not the behavioural intention itself. We suggest using insights from other research streams to test sustainable business tools and ensure that they meet their intended objectives. We furthermore support the call for ensuring that businesses incorporate a strong sustainability paradigm and hope that The Road to Flourishing can help in this endeavour.