Serious games and citizen science; from parallel pathways to greater synergies*

Citizen science and serious games are participatory methods that gained traction in recent years, especially in the environmental sciences in the context of natural resource management. The two approaches interact with both instrumental and relational values of decision making and appear to have similar objectives in supporting the development of a shared understanding of the environmental impacts of human land use decisions with a larger and more active role for stakeholders. One can argue that these two methods have been on seemingly parallel pathways of development. In this paper, we present a brief overview of these developments and explore the complementarity and potential synergies between the two approaches to further strengthen the engagement and empowerment of the public in science.