Bodegus: A Serious Game Intervention to Shape Informal Business Practices

Abstract

This study aimed to test whether a serious-game intervention (Bodegus) strengthens the relationship between the perceived usefulness of formal business practices and the intention to formalize these practices. Using a pre-experimental pre-test–post-test design, 38 Peruvian entrepreneurs played Bodegus as part of a workshop on formality and completed a questionnaire measuring the constructs’ perceived usefulness and intention to formalize business practices. The constructs were modeled as second-order composites in the areas of governance/leadership, legal/tax, and accounting/finance. The analysis was conducted using a multi-group Structural Equation Model with the partial least-squares method. Although the group-difference tests were not statistically significant, the relationship between the two variables was stronger in the post-test model, showing higher explanatory and predictive metrics; therefore, the results were interpreted as exploratory. The originality of this study lies in presenting and detailing Bodegus as a serious-game intervention study that tests two opposing normative ethical approaches: virtue ethics and utilitarianism. Its impact consists of offering a replicable design and an analytical approach for ethical/behavioural education on informality, guiding course design, and micro-level policy initiatives aimed at fostering formal business practices.