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How do we know what works in public engagement activities? That is the research question Nieske Vergunst started with when she was appointed as postdoc in the group of Professor of Oceanography and Public Engagement Erik van Sebille. After several months of reading, talking to people and brainstorming, she came up with a game: a board game with which she could test what she could change in people’s thoughts on sea level rise.

Nieske enlisted two designers to help her devise the game and drew on the experience and advice of the programme makers at the Centre for Science and Culture. Her colleague Tugce Varol was responsible for the evaluation part of the project.

I want to make people feel that sea level rise is relevant to them.

“People tend to see climate change as psychologically distant,” Nieske explains. “Something that happens far in the future, to others. To get people to take action sooner, you need to reduce that distance. You can do that by framing: highlighting certain aspects of an issue. In my game, I want to make people feel that sea level rise is relevant to them and that their actions will make a difference. That’s why everything in the game is personal. They are asked to make personal choices about where they want to live, how they want to travel, how they spend their money.”

At the end of the game, they see the results of their choices in the year 2080. Most young adult participants will still be alive then. They are also shown one or two alternative scenarios they could have ended up in had they made different choices. “Hopefully this makes participants reflect on how their choices shape the future,” explains Nieske.

The game was played for the first time at the Betweter Festival 2023. “The final preparations involved a surprising amount of arts and crafts and climate-conscious shopping,” recalls Nieske. “But once it was showtime, it all paid off. As the game can be played by two to ten people at a time, we were able to keep playing game after game throughout the evening. It was great to observe the participants and hear their experiences and thoughts about the game. It was also quite exhausting: it took me a few days to recover!”

It was great to observe the participants and hear their thoughts on the game.

A young audience

And did the game have the intended impact? Tugce: “We only have preliminary results yet, but it seems that the game had a somewhat positive impact on the audience’s perception of their impact on sea level rise and its relevance in their lives. They also seemed very engaged with the game and the topic.” Nieske adds: “We wanted to know how familiar people in the audience were with science, what we call science capital, because we want to know if that makes a difference in the results. And we wanted to aim at people between the ages of 16 and 25, because they are the ones who will still be alive in 2080.”

Tugce: “From the preliminary results, we saw that the participants we had at Betweter Festival had a fairly high science capital. So we will also play the game at a number of vocational schools and collect more data.”

Next steps

Is it possible to change people’s attitudes with just one experiment? Tugce: “That depends on the activity, but you can also see it as part of an iterative approach. With these activities, you work on attitude change and that can ultimately contribute to behavioural change.” Nieske: “We hope that people will become at least slightly more receptive the next time they hear about sea level rise. That’s something I would like to see explored in follow-up research. We are making the game available for others to use, so we hope the research into its effects can continue!”

Dr Nieske Vergunst is a communication consultant and public engagement researcher at the Faculty of Science
Dr Tugce Varol is a health and social psychologist and public engagement researcher at the Faculty of Science

Text: Stephanie Helfferich