The pervasive use of electronic technology (technophilia) is perceived to be a significant contributor to the decline in public’s engagement with nature in the Anthropocene. However, clever use of smartphones and gaming technology has the potential to involve millions in ‘outdoors activities’ that engage them with nature, even indirectly. Yet most applications to date have focused on people who already care about ecology and ecosystems. For effective and sustained ecological protection and restoration, community support is essential. Is it possible that mobile technology might be harnessed as an agent of connection to the environment, rather than technophilia being seen as a driver of detachment?
Results/Conclusions
Here we argue that highly popular games played on smartphones and tablets might serve as an ideal software template for the creation of new and explicitly ecologically focussed apps, tailored for the gaming, tech-savvy generation. We develop the argument using an example of the hugely popular mobile augmented reality game ‘Ingress’, to show how gaming technology can excite people about nature, unlock their inherent biophilia, and highlight the value of ecological restoration in their everyday lives. This might include acceptance of the value of novel ecosystems. To have a realistic chance of enhancing public perception and understanding of conservation and restoration ecology, nature-engagement activities must be fun, challenging and interactive. A workable eco-app game, which we have coined ‘Egress’, might allow players to ‘re-imagine’ an ecosystem of a local area as it once existed, or envisage how a restored or novel system could appear. Our conceptual results strongly suggest that mobile augmented reality offers a tangible prospect of achieving these goals.