Hackathons and code camps have been used over the years to ideate, collaborate and develop innovative solutions to address sustainability challenges with citizens. However, there is less research on how hackathon products can drive citizens' behavioral changes via engagement in sustainable activities to improve sustainability awareness in society. In this study, we evaluate the potential of the hackathon to address local sustainability issues and develop innovative solutions to engage and stimulate citizens and hackathon participants for sustainable activities and awareness. Our approach involves the implementation of two hackathons, Living Lab Hack and SustHack. The result from the two hackathons shows that citizen engagement in hackathons brings a new dimension that facilitates inclusiveness in designing sustainability solutions and increases citizen sustainability awareness. Furthermore, the hackathon served as a reawakening call to action for the students and the citizens about the sustainability impacts of their activities.
Sustainability is a critical issue that impacts
every aspect of our lives and the planet across
various dimensions, covering environmental,
social, and economic challenges. It is a complex
issue that must be addressed to create a
sustainable future. Becker et al. [
Although hackathons and code camps have
existed over the years [
Hackathons offer fast-paced, design-driven,
and practical events where participants transform
ideas into solutions for a specific problem or
challenge, typically within a particular time frame
[
Our study ignites a call to action to address local sustainability issues and highlight the perceived impacts of engaging citizens in sustainable activities through prototype design. Specifically, this study answers the following research questions.
• RQ1 How can hackathons be used to engage citizens and foster a sustainability mindset in their local environment? • RQ2 What are the perceived impacts of such engagement among citizens and hackathon participants?
Emphasizing sustainability education is
essential to raise awareness and drive sustainable
behavioral changes among academia, business
organizations, government, and society to
guarantee a more sustainable future. However,
while many Higher education institutes (HEIs)
continue to integrate sustainability teachings into
their curriculum, the specific focus on IT
sustainability courses is limited. For example,
Genovese and Genovese [
Lappeenranta is widely known for its
sustainability culture and being among the
Greenest cities in Europe and won the European
Green Leaf Award 2021 [
Recognizing the importance of Culture in
human decision-making and sustainability can
bring the economic, social, and environmental
aspects closer [
Hackathons are implemented to drive
innovative, practical solutions in different formats
and structures, participation criteria, and intended
outcomes. Unfortunately, research that combines
sustainability, citizen engagement, and
hackathons is limited. Nevertheless, we found a
few studies that have explored the potential of
hackathons as a tool for promoting sustainability.
For example, Zapico et al. [
Furthermore, a study on citizen empowerment
with civic technologies [
A study by Szymanska et al. [
There is still room to explore the suitability of hackathons in the sustainability and citizen engagement domains to deliver on the critical value of promoting sustainability awareness, offering innovative fast-track solutions, and providing support for enhancing citizens’ engagement. Nevertheless, this study contributed to novel knowledge of exploring the capability of hackathons to drive and foster a sustainability mindset and engage citizens for sustainable lifestyles and behavioral changes.
The approach involves the implementation of two hackathons - The Living Lab and SustHack, organized as part of the project titled ‘Synchronizing sustainable development actions between Finland and Malaysia - the Hackathon approach.’ The project connected two universities with a strong sustainability focus: LUT University in Finland and Sunway University in Malaysia. The project aimed to develop sustainability education in both countries through hackathons to solve real, local challenges while engaging the citizens. This paper focuses on two hackathons delivered in Finland. 3.1.
The Living Lab hack was a five-day local hackathon (between 25th April and 29th April 2022). The first in the series to find solutions to empower citizens and business owners for the common good. The participants were required to develop actionable solutions or services in the form of a prototype of innovative ideas that ensure the engagement of various stakeholders. While the theme is tagged “Local Sustainability Issue,” each team was tasked to conduct a preliminary assessment by meeting with small business owners (SMEs), targeted customers, and general citizens within their immediate environment (the University and the Community) for interactions to identify local sustainability issues. The identified local issues are then presented for review, adoption, and initial feedback from the organizers. Finally, each team developed a suitable prototype solution to tackle the challenges identified. There were three participating teams consisting of four members each. The best two teams qualify for the final SustHack (Engagement hackathon). The prototype is enhanced, tested, and the approach is The juries were from LUT University, Finland, and Sunway University, Malaysia, with expertise in software engineering, sustainability, citizen engagement, and digital innovation. Table 2 details the jury’s research interest distribution.
The solutions were evaluated on six focus areas: (1) sustainability issues; (2) technically implementable; (3) innovation; (4) citizen focus; (5) economic viability; and (6) pitching of the solution. At the end of the presentations and evaluation, Team Titan and Team BinaryBin emerged as the best two winning teams, and Team SustMine 2nd runner-up, respectively. 3.2.
Unlike the traditional hackathons reported in the literature, we adopted a robust citizen discussed in a real-time environment by engaging the relevant stakeholders (citizens and business owners) in partnership with the visiting Malaysian students.
All the participating members in this phase are M.Sc students of Software Engineering (SE) at LUT University, Finland, with varying prior hackathon experiences and a strong interest in sustainability education. The demography details of the participants are in Table 1.
Cultural diversity
Role distribution Asian and African Asian, African, and European Asian, African, and European
Project manager, Req. Engineer, Full stack developer, UI Designer Product manager, Req. Engineer, Front-end developer, Back-end developer Req. Engineer, Product manager,
Full stack developer, Designer engagement approach in the SustHack supported by a sustainable action-oriented that goes beyond the technical aspect of problem-solving to include users’ validation to spur climate actions. The SustHack hackathon was held in a five-day (between 23rd May and 27th May 2022) intensive event at LUT University, Finland, to take the winning solutions from the best two teams of the Living Lab hackathon (Teams Titan and BinaryBin) to the public and engage with relevant stakeholders. In addition, two additional members from Sunway University, Malaysia, with computer science (CE) and Artificial intelligence (AI) backgrounds, joined the teams to make the group a six-members each. This addition improved the teams’ diversity and perspectives as they went head-to-head to perfect their solutions and engage with the citizens.
The SustHack Hackathon phase was used to enhance and work more on the solutions and includes technical implementation of the sustainability solutions with a citizens’ engagement and validation approach that covers direct engagement with targeted stakeholders to receive feedback and validate the suitability and value of the proposed solutions to solving the sustainability issues that was identified and discussed in the first phase. Table 3 provides information about the SustHack participant’s distributions.
The SustHack approach (see Figure 1) covered the following vital aspects; planning, presentations, further brainstorming on the sustainability issues, ideation and design, codings and implementation, market research and citizen engagement, pitching, and jury evaluation. In addition, the mentorship was provided by a group of 6 Ph.D. students throughout the hackathons processes. Figure 1 provides an overview of the SustHack process.
Education level Role distribution 5 master’s
students 1 bachelor
student 5 master’s
students 1 bachelor student
Project manager, Req.
Engineer, Full stack developer, UI/UX Designer Product manager, Req.
Engineer, Front-end developer, Back-end developer two products to the local Community. In addition, adequate time was allocated for debriefing sessions to evaluate sustainability ideas, engagement approach, patterns of teamwork, and an implementation plan for turning the winning solutions into actual projects that will last beyond the participants.
Data were collected through surveys, interviews, and observation methods.
Day 1 *Presentations *Brainstorming *Planning
Day 2 *Ideation & design * Citizens engagement
Day 3 *Implementation
Day 4 *Market research *Citizens engagement
Day 5 *Finalizing *Pitching *Q&A *Awards
The LUT University’s Linux Lab provides the
participants with all the tools and resources for
ideating, designing, implementing, and presenting
their ideas throughout the hackathons. The first
hackathon was organized following the
methodology reported by Happonen et al. [
Surveys: The team conducted a random stakeholder engagement survey before the Living Lab hackathon and a validated survey with their proposed solutions for the SustHack hackathon. The approach allowed the teams to identify a suitable method to engage their targeted users and highlight the proposed solution’s suitability for the identified sustainability issues.
The survey participants include SMEs and citizens. They were recruited in two stages. First, by random approach within the University and the city area and asking questions about their understanding of sustainability, their businesses, challenges, suggestions, customer experience, reality, expectations, background, and willingness to test and review the proposed solution in the second phase. The outcome of the engagement survey was used to arrive at the decisions on which issues to address and which stakeholder groups to engage further in the later part of the hackathon.
Secondly, the stakeholders willing to
participate in the second phase were
approached with a prototype solution
developed in the SustHack stage for
evaluation and feedback. Finally, new and
interested participants (likely end users) were
also included to test and answer a short
survey about the developed prototype.
• Interview: We interviewed all the
participants from both Living Lab and
SustHack hackathons (16 in total) following
the completion of the hackathon to gather
indepth information about participants’
experiences, perceptions, challenges,
engagement approach, and learning
outcomes. The interview protocol included
questions about participants’ motivations for
the hackathon, perceptions of the event
organizations, challenges, areas of
improvement, skills used and newly
developed, and general feedback.
• Observation: We observed both hackathon
events to gather data on the team selection
and organization, design and
implementation, participants’ interactions,
and collaborative activities during the event
to balance the response from interviewing.
The teams presented their findings from the
engagement activities and survey conducted as
part of their solution presentations on the fifth
day. The findings from the engagement stage are
discussed in section 5, respectively. We employ
the narrative analysis method and guidelines [
The result presentation is based on the information from the team’s presentations, their pre-hackathon and hackathon engagement surveys, and the post-hackathon interview and observations conducted by the researchers. Even though an international traveling prize was attached to the winning solution, all the teams cordially conducted themselves. They demonstrated their knowledge of sustainability education accordingly in a friendly mood throughout the event. Furthermore, good collaboration in and across the teams without negative competing behavior was observed as the team used their dedicated writing boards to ideate and collaborate. For example, we observed how Team BinaryBin openly requested the integration of an API key at a point from the Tarvary Team, which was gladly provided. 4.1.
We asked the teams about their motivation for participating in the event, and their responses showed a voluntary interest, building on previous experience, interest in solving common sustainability issues, eagerness to experience new learning, and eyes on the final prize. The summary of the keywords of their response was presented in Figure 2 as a word cloud.
From the participant’s responses concerning the perceived improved skills during the event, the two hackathons revealed the essential skills, competencies, and current knowledge of sustainability that helped each team navigate the events’ entire processes. The most cited improved skills identified from their verbatim responses during the interview include communication, teamwork, technical competency, stress management, knowledge of sustainability, and project management.
The participants also reported that the
hackathon was an engaging and stimulating
experience that helped them think critically about
sustainability issues, gain new skills, develop
innovative solutions, improve self-confidence and
consider various approaches to engaging their
targeted users. The findings align with previous
authors’ work [
Participants relied on the first briefing of the event organizer, their understanding of previously completed sustainability courses, and their team’s communication skills to recruit their targeted citizens and formulate an engagement strategy to be adopted. The fact that the LUT University community is mainly known for its strong commitment to promoting sustainability within and outside the University empowered the targeted group within the community with a reasonable understanding of sustainability. There is evidence of many sustainability activities and calls to action in and around the University campus. The participants reported dividing their coverage area into 3: the University community, Prisma and its environs, and the City Centre. The engagement strategy is grouped into five (education and communication; empowerment; calls to action; ownership; and feedback); the description is presented in Table 4.
Approaches Education and communication Empowerment Calls to action Ownership Feedback
Description Outcome Discuss and understand challenges, supported with Reimagining sustainability issues that credible evidence and narration. were previously neglected. Provide platform and alternative options to ensure Empowering citizens to champion participation in addressing common needs. sustainable behavioral changes. Provide a clear, attractive, and well-communicated Broadening community participation, call to action to trigger a sustainable behavioral inclusiveness, and ownership. change.
Highlight the importance of taking ownership and commitment to a sustainable environment.
Feedback system that shows the impact of one’s action and promotes positive reinforcement for behavioral changes.
Demonstrations of sustainability knowledge and community support.
Continuous feedback and reminders about the impact of one’s actions on the environment.
Some existing calls to action and sustainable activity points identified within the University community and the city include waste drop points, waste separation guides, plastics and bottles recycling points, sustainable food consumption points, e-biking spots, bicycle lanes, public transport adverts, sustainable energy usage, and second-hand shops in different locations. Starting from the University, the teams reach out to the SME owners on campus, their customers, university staff, and students. This was followed by Prisma and City center area, where random SME owners and citizens were engaged. An excerpt from the teams is quoted below:
“The first stage started with the discussion on their awareness and experience about University’s sustainable activities. The discussion opened up new ideas and challenges. However, most new students and staff (especially Non-EU) express low knowledge about sustainable activities… The same approach was used at the Prisma area and the City center”. 4.4.
Three prototype solutions emerged from the LivingLab to the SustHack hackathons. However, only the best two prototypes made it to the SustHack, where the winner emerged. The overall winner demonstrated the best engagement plan, reached out to the highest number of citizens, and presented the most convincing pitch with their prototype app (TarvaryMoves) that focuses on the engagement of the SMEs to promote the sustainable movement of goods and facilitate citizens’ commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, encourage social engagement and interaction, and boost sharing economy. The developed solutions promise not just to save the environment but also to contribute to the socio-economic empowerment of citizens and instigate individual actions toward achieving sustainable lifestyles. The description and ranking of each team’s solution are presented in Table 5.
The cooperation of all the participants in abiding by the rules and following the instructions is commendable. In addition, their common educational background aided the participants’ team formation. Quoting from the teams.
“Actually, we have all worked together as a group previously in the Software Architecture course during our time in Italy. We all had experience participating in hackathons before now, and we consider this event an opportunity to demonstrate our understanding of courses on sustainability to solve real-life sustainability issues in our immediate environment”. - Titan Team
“We have some coding activities we do as we just code together. We shared a common interest in coding previously, and when the hackathons came up, we all embraced it and decided to work together again” - Binary Team
“Three of us have never participated in a hackathon before, and we are very excited about participating in this one” – SustMine Team
We discovered that all the participants were motivated by the ultimate prize of international traveling and competition. They were also motivated to demonstrate their understanding of sustainability-related courses and previous experiences and learn new ones, working as a team to build products and services to reawake civic actions for sustainability among the citizens and do something good for the community. 5.2.
• •
Skills and collaboration: The event helped the participants to demonstrate several skills and competencies more practically. It also improved soft and hard skills, as the organizers emphasized this through several short presentations and mentorship. The teams were allowed to seek assistance from each other and were gladly provided. The participant also appreciated the importance of short punctuation during the event, as it helps to ensure feedback, mentoring, and fun. Additionally, they reported that working in a time-limited and goal-oriented environment motivated them to think more deeply about their immediate environmental issues and how the users of the solution perceived the significance of the developed solutions.
Citizen recruitment and engagement: The fact that the LUT University community is known for its strong commitment to promoting sustainability within and outside the University empowered the Community with a reasonable understanding of sustainability. The initial engagement’s outcome helped the participant finalize a specific local issue to address.
All citizens who willingly participated in the engagement phases have varying reasons for participation. They do so out of their interest to contribute to sustainability actions around them and as an opportunity to suggest their ideas, raise their challenges and work with the students in their learning pursuits.
Overall, the impact of the citizens’ engagement includes reawakening and discussion of sustainability with the citizens, validation of the existence of local sustainability issues, and relevance of the proposed solutions to solving them. Additionally, it helps to identify factors (rewards, incentives, ease of use, availability, and prior awareness) that motivate citizens’ adoption of the solution and strengthen the participant’s sustainability knowledge and entrepreneurship plan.
Hackathon solution and ranking: The team with the most coverage, the most significant number of feedback, and the best pitching emerged as the winner. The prototype solution comes with web and mobile apps. It utilizes persuasive strategies like rewards, incentives, and leaderboards to encourage environmentally-friendly behavior and foster a sustainable mindset among the citizens.
Furthermore, the event helped the team to
strengthen their teamwork, problem-solving,
and critical thinking skills and develop a sense
of personal responsibility for addressing
sustainability challenges, as reported in [
There were a few challenges identified before and during the hackathon. Firstly, students reported challenges in getting the willingness of the engagement participants (especially those outside the University environment) to cooperate with the student in the pre-hackathon stage. This is primarily due to the language barrier among SME owners. At one point, all the teams worked together to share the knowledge of the two Finnish speakers on the team. Secondly, the visiting team member from Malaysia had an initial cultural shock and issue understanding the motivation behind the proposed solution. Finally, the participants’ group expressed the challenges in convincing others to join their team and discussed the hackathon requirements before registration.
Another important finding is that the participants believed that community engagement and education were crucial to the success of sustainability initiatives. The stakeholder engagement brings a new dynamism to the entire process, as participants were able to validate that their solutions address one of the numerous sustainability issues facing the citizens. All three teams hope the prototype will outlive the hackathon event.
The importance of post-hackathon activities
and further implementation after the event must
be emphasized. However, the assertions of
previous authors [
We answered RQ1 by demonstrating the potential of the hackathon to engage citizens to foster a sustainability mindset through real-world solutions that have citizens’ input in the design and a lasting impact on society. The hackathon opens up discussions between the participant and the citizens about their immediate sustainability issues, activities, what could be changed, how it could change, and their commitment to an ecofriendly environment through their behavior and actions.
We uncovered the impact of citizens’ engagement on both the participants and the citizens (RQ2); the participants shared that their engagement with targeted users provided valuable insights into actual sustainability issues. They reported gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the field through engagement activities, which helped the team to identify needed features and changes in the potential solutions. In addition, they highlighted that the hackathon approach was unique and a valuable learning experience that allowed them to go out and meet real users for ideas and engage them in problem-solving to understand users’ dynamics. Another finding is the importance of exposure to diverse perspectives and experiences in the hackathon setting. They noted that this exposure helped them to broaden their thinking and approach to sustainability issues, understand market/user needs, and validate their ideas. As a result, they felt better equipped to make a positive impact on sustainability education.
Our research is subject to several threats to
validity, including internal, external, and
conclusion validity. The threats to the study’s
validity and mitigation [
Internal validity relates to a causal relationship. Because hackathon participants were recruited via a well-advertised method, they were motivated to participate due to their awareness about sustainability, knowledge, and skills without being coarse. Thus, their choice of sustainability issues as community residents may differ from what the majority consider a sustainability issue. However, they validated the issues’ existence while engaging with the citizens.
External validity relates to the generalization of our findings. This means that the result of adopting citizens’ engagement guarantees assurance with a hackathon. The engaged citizens ranged from individual city residents to relevant business owners, who all agreed with the existence of sustainability issues and were willing to embrace sustainable behavioral changes.
Conclusion validity relates to the degree to which conclusions drawn from the relationships in data are reasonable. The participants in the final SustHack are 12 in total, with each team presenting its engagement outcome. The posthackathon interview for the participants was open-ended to learn about their motivation, experience, lessons learned and the perceived impact of the SustHack approach in fostering sustainable actions.
We highlighted how hackathons could motivate the participants and citizens and reawaken a sustainability mindset through friendly discussion, highlighting the impact of one’s actions and activities on the environment. Through the engagement, we uncovered local sustainability issues and developed prototype solutions emphasizing behavioral changes and adopting an eco-friendly commitment to tackling local sustainability issues.
Additionally, the perceived impact of engagement during the hackathons was unraveled. The participants in the hackathon were motivated by their previously completed ICT (software and systems) sustainability courses. They demonstrated their knowledge to solve reallife challenges by offering the citizens a voice in solving local issues.
Beyond the usual potential and value of hackathons, we have proven the possibility of hackathons to contribute to learning and foster sustainability awareness, citizens’ engagement, and eco-friendly behavioral changes within and outside the HEIs. The citizens’ engagement approach is promising and would bring about positive impacts of the hackathon and the sustainability of developed solutions beyond the hackathon itself. Additionally, the research gap suggests limited adoption of the general citizens’ engagement in the previous hackathons for sustainability and evidence of their input in validating the outcome.
The engagement approach in the sustainability hackathon poses an exciting research direction for technology-driven sustainability research and needs further exploration. This study provides a unique means of empowering and engaging software engineering students and citizens in sustainability education and awareness. It is a valuable starting point for demonstrating positive actions toward a sustainable lifestyle. The findings from the study are an excellent pointer to creating awareness and reawakening local and people’s actions toward achieving sustainable development goals. We recommend the inclusion of locals and fluent speakers of the local language in future team formation to reduce language and culture barriers.
Further research on the sustainability hackathons with citizens’ engagement approach across different sustainability issues will help shed more light on the benefits and perceived impact on the citizens, the participants, and the sustainability of the developed solutions beyond the hackathon event. In addition, a post-hackathon sustainability plan will help keep the developed solutions alive and suitable for general usage.
The hackathons were organized as part of the project titled ‘Synchronizing sustainable development actions between Finland and Malaysia - the Hackathon approach.’ We acknowledge all the participating students from Software Engineering for Green Deals (SE4GD), LUT Finland, the Computing and Information Systems students from Sunway University, Malaysia, and all the citizens engaged in the project for their commitment to promoting sustainability awareness.