Playing Edcraft at Home: Gamified Online Learning for Recycling Intention during Lockdown

Background: Gamification is an innovative approach to engaging in activities that people believe as less interesting. Recycling has been an issue not taken aware by the people in environmental sustainability. There are substantial studies on recycling intention due to the continual growth of unethical and unsustainable waste disposal. Creative approaches to recycling awareness activities should be made to fulfil youths’ increasing interest in and demand for recycling. The main objective of this study is to explore the factors related to youths’ recycling intentions after experiencing a gamified online recycling learning activity, Edcraft Gamified Learning (EGL). Gamified recycling education is believed to be a practical and engaging approach for youths. Methods: 100 students participated in EGL, consisting of two levels of plastic crafting and recycling activities. They experienced online EGL at home between May and September in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic total lockdown in Malaysia, namely, Movement Control Order (MCO). 29 participants were selected to participate in five focus group discussions (FGDs) with five to eight participants per session to explore their opinions towards gamified learning, motivation and recycling intention. Results: This paper reports the findings of the FGDs. A codebook was developed based on the codes from the FGD feedback. The codes were rated by two raters, followed by an assessment of inter-rater reliability and thematic analysis. The findings emerged and were confirmed with four themes as factors that influence recycling intention. They are gameful experience, social influence, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation. Conclusion: The dependent variable, recycling intention, was connected to the four themes to verify the conceptual framework. One limitation of the study was the design of the EGL activity, which was only carried out over two days with two levels of gamified recycling education, as students had concurrent academic online classes during that period.