Building collaborative digital behavioural science: A cross-sector agenda from video games research

Digital environments such as video games are central to contemporary life, yet progress in understanding their range of impacts has been hindered by limited data access, skewed funding, imbalanced research agendas, and inadequate coordination between academia, industry, policymakers, and community stakeholders. To address this lack of progress, we conducted a multi-stage modified Delphi study (n = 85 round one; n = 59 round two) followed by an in-person World Café workshop (n = 30) involving experts from most major game studios, international policy bodies, NGOs, research funders, and academia. Across online and in-person stages, participants identified shared priorities for future research and articulated practical steps needed to advance them. Using preferential-rank Single Transferable Vote analysis and reflexive thematic synthesis, we derived four cross-cutting conditions which had general consensus across stakeholders as necessary for coordinated progress: (i) strengthening evidence, (ii) improving communication, (iii) fostering collaboration, and (iv) building literacy. We translate these into a cross-sector roadmap outlining concrete near-, mid-, and long-term actions for researchers, industry, policymakers, funders, and civil society. Although developed in the context of video games, the structural barriers and proposed solutions generalise to behavioural science as a whole. Our findings show that while progress can often be difficult in digital behavioural science, applying the often underutilised Delphi and World Café methods allowed for the creation of both convergent priorities and a concrete path forward that stakeholders across sectors support. We see this as a foundation for building a more cumulative, transparent, and collaborative science of human behaviour in digital environments.