Gamifying Community Education for Enhanced Disaster Resilience: An Effectiveness Testing Study from Australia

Nayomi Kankanamge, Tan Yigitcanlar and Ashantha Goonetilleke
Additional contact information
Nayomi Kankanamge: Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa, Katubedda, Moratuwa 10400, Sri Lanka
Tan Yigitcanlar: School of Architecture and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia
Ashantha Goonetilleke: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia

Future Internet, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-22

Abstract: Providing convenient and effective online education is important for the public to be better prepared for disaster events. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of such education is questionable due to the limited use of online tools and platforms, which also results in narrow community outreach. Correspondingly, understanding public perceptions of disaster education methods and experiences for the adoption of novel methods is critical, but this is an understudied area of research. The aim of this study is to understand public perceptions towards online disaster education practices for disaster preparedness and evaluate the effectiveness of the gamification method in increasing public awareness. This study utilizes social media analytics and conducts a gamification exercise. The analysis involved Twitter posts ( n = 13,683) related to the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires, and surveyed participants ( n = 52) before and after experiencing a gamified application—i.e., STOP Disasters! The results revealed that: (a) The public satisfaction level is relatively low for traditional bushfire disaster education methods; (b) The study participants’ satisfaction level is relatively high for an online gamified application used for disaster education; and (c) The use of virtual and augmented reality was found to be promising for increasing the appeal of gamified applications, along with using a blended traditional and gamified approach.

Keywords: disaster education; community education; disaster resilience; disaster games; gamification; serious games; bushfires; public perception; social media analytics; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/14/6/179/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/14/6/179/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jftint:v:14:y:2022:i:6:p:179-:d:834645

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().