Gamified Sustainability: Virtual Reality Escape Room for Recycling Education
We present a virtual reality (VR) escape room game to support recycling education, which is played in immersive VR utilizing a head-mounted display (HMD). By leveraging the immersive capabilities of VR and the motivational aspects of gamification, the developed game combines interactive recycling tasks with engaging escape room mechanics to build awareness and skills in waste sorting. Set in a wilderness log cabin, players sort virtual waste into appropriate bins, receiving immediate feedback to reinforce learning. This research contributes to the growing body of work in HCI on environmental education, and provides background for future studies on gamified VR experiences for sustainability education.
Authors
- Jonna Häkkilä (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2172-6233)
- Ashley Colley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7750-2058)
- Kuisma Hurtig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0375-9725)
- Zhengya Gong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0560-6530)
- Juri Etto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4415-5906)
- Plamen Ivanov
Institutions
- University of Lapland (FI)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-06-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/icmew68306.2025.11152077
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Ergonomics and Human Factors
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.67