Disambiguating Preferences for Gamification Strategies to Motivate Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Abstract

Much topical gamification research has focused on the application of personality trait models and the development of player typologies. These models are often applied under the assumption that personality or gamification user type reside as a stable construct within the individual. However, the preference for gamification strategies as well as their motivational impact, may vary in different contexts and situations. Therefore, our study aimed to disambiguate the different levels of motivation (global, contextual and situational) underlying preferences for gamification strategies, in the specific domain of pro-environmental behaviour. To this end, we developed a gamified mobile app to promote pro-environmental behaviour. Next, 56 participants interacted with the app during on average 22 days, while logs with various game elements were collected. Additionally, participants filled out the Hexad questionnaire to establish gamification user type, a survey polling for intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation towards the environment, and two questionnaires to assess pro-environmental behaviour before and after app usage. Our findings suggest that particularly intrinsic motivation towards the environment predicts preferences for gamification strategies whereas gamification user types fall short. In sum, our study lends support to measuring at different levels of motivation to understand and tailor gamification strategies for pro-environmental behaviour. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; User models.

Influence of Motivational Design Techniques on Use and Acceptance of Self-Management Health Systems in Older Adults

“…Participants scored positive on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and negative on amotivation. Compared to other studies [30,32], it is remarkable that participants in our study scored equally high on extrinsic levels of motivation as intrinsic levels of motivation.…”

“…These authors found that preferences for MDT indeed differ among older adults, but furthermore, preferences are associated with initial levels of intrinsic, extrinsic and amotivation. Recent studies in different fields have echoed similar findings [31][32][33][34][35]. These studies equally show initial levels of motivation towards behaviour that influence the preference for specific MDT.…”

“…In the past decades, motivational design has boomed [22,32,33,50], and myriad taxonomies and models exist that enlist and categorise the diverse MDT and link them to the theoretical backgrounds [18,[51][52][53][54]. MDT have been particularly popular in mHealth, i.e., health apps to be displayed on a smartphone or tablet, and supported by sensors embedded in the mobile device or extended with wearables.…”

“…As earlier work indicated, perceived usefulness is one of the main barriers for technology adoption in older adults [12,90]. Taken this into account, it will remain difficult to persuade participants who are amotivated to self-manage health to use an SMHS in the first place [30,32].…”

The Impact of Game Elements on Learner Motivation: Influence of Initial Motivation and Player Profile

“…These results highlight the necessity to tailor gamification, considering both player types and learner initial motivationsomething that has been recently investigated in the field of pro-environmental behavior by Vanhoudt et al [19]. Finally, we provide design recommendations on the game elements to use in education according to these two factors.…”