Additional background information concerning SIMULME
In SIMULME the player receives a feedback to the effects of his food purchas-ing by means of scenario simulation. The scenarios consider the results of eco-logical research and the appraisals of experts. But they do not describe quantita-tive exact prognoses of the future. The effects of the own consumption patterns are demonstrated in an exaggerated way, with the aim that the effect of the own behaviour is shown in a more emphasized way. This procedure results from the cognition of typical social and ecological dilemma. Such dilemma include fre-quently the following characteristics that enhance behaviour pattern which are harmful to the environment:
1. The eco friendly attitude of an individual can contribute only lowly to the conservation of the environment. However, the impacts of behaviour de-cisions of many individuals do have a major effect on the environmental development.
In SIMULME the "eco-relevance” of the own purchasing decisions have been fortified by the possibility to choose at the beginning the degree of influence to other individuals in Switzerland (i.e. what fraction of the Swiss population co-sumes in the same way as the player). By giving a feedback to the effects of the purchasing patterns of the players as scenarios SIMULME allows a process of discovery learning. In so doing economic and ecological knowledge is shown in order to promote eco-friendly consumption patterns.
The game SIMULME was developped in the Research Group "Methods of Environmental Evaluation and Modeling (MEEM)" of the Natural Sciences Social Sciences Interface (UNS) of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ).
We thank Dr. Niels
Jungbluth who has accomplished a modulary ecological assessment of nutrition consumption (click here, to access his dissertation), which is an important basis of this game. He also created the internet tool ULME for the calculation of environmental impacts of consumption pattern, which is closely connected with the SIMULME website. For his work, Nils Jungbluth has received the award "Greenhirn" of the ecological institute (EKO) of Freiburg i. Breisgau, Germany, in the year 2000.
2. Behaviour pattern that are harmful to the environment are often combined with short-dated individual benefit or reduction of costs.
In August 2002 two experimental studies on SimUlme obtained the "Outstanding Paper Award"
of the joint conference of "International Simulation and Gaming Association" and
"Society for the Advancement of Gaming and Simulation in Education and Training" in Edinburgh (see Archive ETH Life)
for the article "Internet-based environmental education: Two experiments on the simulation game SimUlme".
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