Gamification as an approach to promote tourist recycling behavior

Abstract

Recycling behavior is an issue that affects the sustainability of many seasonal destinations. The EU promotes projects such as the UrbanWaste that try to study how to avoid the deplorable consequences on cities of this situation. This project has implemented a gamified application, named WasteApp in several European cities, in order to promote the recycling behavior of tourists. This study aimed to verify if the application can be a successful tool to foster recycling and to improve tourism destination reputation. The results show that tourist satisfaction will be influenced directly by the perceived usefulness of the application, and perceived usefulness by the perceived ease of use, but the expectations of the prizes can be counterproductive if they are not perceived as useful for the promoted behavior. Likewise, the satisfaction of the user will influence the recycling behavior, which at the same time improves the reputation of the destination. Besides, the initiative will be visible through word of mouth that is generated from the perceived usefulness, the user's satisfaction, and the recycling behavior itself. That is, according to this study a gamified application can contribute to the recycling behavior of tourists and improve the image of the destination that adopts it.