Should a wind farm be built in a particular region, or is the integrity of the landscape a more important consideration? How should the wastewater infrastructure be designed in the future? Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a recognised tool for weighing up such environmental questions, and an important stage of the methodology is to ascertain the preferences of those involved: What is important to them when making their decision? What goals do they rate most highly? Individual interviews and moderated workshops are useful means of eliciting these viewpoints, but online surveys would be a far less time-consuming way of doing so. The problem with this is that participants are often unfamiliar with the complex issues, or they give up because the questions are often repetitive. To get around these kinds of obstacles, Alice Aubert from the department of Environmental Social Sciences has developed a new kind of survey app using the example of wastewater infrastructure.

Holding participants’ attention

“We packaged the questionnaire in a story in which virtual characters communicate with the participants”, explains Aubert. These gaming elements are designed to make the process fun for the users and keep them motivated. The required knowledge is imparted through several iterative levels. The key point of the questionnaire is to get the participants to reflect on their goals and to weigh these up. Conflicts between the different goals inevitably arise in the process. Take one example from Aubert’s app: wastewater infrastructure with a high level of phosphorus recovery requires the installation of unconventional toilets, which has the potential to meet with a lower level of acceptance among the users. Users have to decide whether phosphorus recovery or social acceptance is more important. If the questionnaire reveals differing preferences within the various methods, the user has to re-evaluate their answer. “Some of the test subjects felt overly controlled by this”, says Aubert.