Gamification as An Approach to Promote Tourist Recycling Behavior

Recycling behavior is an issue that aects 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.