Fostering Collaboration and Sustainability Through Serious Games in Supply Chain Management Education

This study examined changes in students’ self-perceived Sustainability Action Competence (SAC) and Collaboration Competence (CC) associated with participation in the Tequila Game, a multiplayer serious game in which students assume the role of competing retailers and make operational, sustainability, and voluntary collaboration decisions in a shared market. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest control-group design was conducted with 188 undergraduate engineering students across eight course sections. Students in the treatment group participated in the Tequila Game, whereas the control group completed alternative active-learning activities. Compared with the control group, participants in the Tequila Game achieved significantly larger gains in overall SAC and CC (both p < 0.001). Among the component dimensions, the largest improvements were observed for Learning (t = 7.31, p < 0.001, dz = 0.79), Willingness to Act (t = 7.01, p < 0.001, dz = 0.76), and Confidence in One’s Own Influence (t = 5.77, p < 0.001, dz = 0.63). Gameplay analyses complemented the survey findings by showing that collaboration was conditional rather than automatic: inventory sharing increased primarily when retailers held substantial surpluses, transportation sharing consistently improved vehicle utilization, and collaboration occasionally failed despite broad support and the absence of clear operational incentives for defection. These findings demonstrate that serious games can strengthen sustainability- and collaboration-related competencies while exposing students to the operational and behavioral complexities of collaborative decision making.