Environmental education (EE) plays a vital role in engaging young people in exploring environmental issues and developing their sense of responsibility to the environment. Although gamification appears to be a promising way to motivate and engage K-12 students, it is unclear how it should be implemented in EE and whether it holds promising results similar to other contexts, such as science and engineering education. This paper reports a systematic literature review analysing the 28 papers published in the last five years. The results show how gamification has been employed to support EE and in what contexts. More specifically, the findings of this review contribute to our knowledge in the following three aspects: (1) EE strategies for implementing gamified interventions, (2) gamification strategies and elements utilised in EE, and (3) reported outcomes of gamified EE intervention. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for future related research on developing gamified interventions for EE.

Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

Author's Accepted Manuscript