Gamifying Sustainable Behavior at Work: Results from an Experiment with a Corporate Gamification App

Society’s increasing demand to protect the climate puts enormous pressure on companies of all sectors to reduce their CO2 footprint. Besides strategic investments in more sustainable value creation, it is also essential that employees adapt their mindset, motivation, and behavior. However, measures to engage employees to change their behavior are rare. In recent years, gamification has gained popularity as an effective approach to influencing human motivation and driving behavior change. This paper provides an overview of existing research on the use of gamification to engage sustainable behavior and empirical results from an experiment with a gamified app to promote sustainable behavior in a mid-sized company. Data is collected from users of the app and extended with information about their personality traits according to the HEXACO and NEP scales. The results indicate that gamification does indeed appear to be a suitable approach to support sustainable behavior at work

Understanding human factors in the metaverse - an autonomous driving experiment

Research often draws on established research methods such as lab or field experiments to investigate urgent questions about human factors in future autonomous mobility. However, conducting experiments in such a context is either expensive and complex to implement and operate, when the researchers aim for realism, or otherwise entails limitations with regard to the external validity of the experiments. In this work, we propose the use of immersive virtual experiments in emerging game-based ‘metaverse’ platforms as a cost-efficient approach with the potential for high realism. Next to a prototype, we present the setup of an experiment for investigating user behavior in an autonomous driving scenario we want to realize. Finally, we provide an outlook on how we plan to gain novel insights for designing realistic experiments in the metaverse

The Gamification of Crowdsourcing Systems: Empirical Investigations and Design

Recent developments in modern information and communication technologies have spawned two rising phenomena, gamification and crowdsourcing, which are increasingly being combined into gamified crowdsourcing systems. While a growing number of organizations employ crowdsourcing as a way to outsource tasks related to the inventing, producing, funding, or distributing of their products and services to the crowd – a large group of people reachable via the internet – crowdsourcing initiatives become enriched with design features from games to motivate the crowd to participate in these efforts. From a practical perspective, this combination seems intuitively appealing, since using gamification in crowdsourcing systems promises to increase motivations, participation and output quality, as well as to replace traditionally used financial incentives. However, people in large groups all have individual interests and motivations, which makes it complex to design gamification approaches for crowds. Further, crowdsourcing systems exist in various forms and are used for various tasks and problems, thus requiring different incentive mechanisms for different crowdsourcing types. The lack of a coherent understanding of the different facets of gamified crowdsourcing systems and the lack of knowledge about the motivational and behavioral effects of applying various types of gamification features in different crowdsourcing systems inhibit us from designing solutions that harness gamification’s full potential. Further, previous research canonically uses competitive gamification, although crowdsourcing systems often strive to produce cooperative outcomes. However, the potentially relevant field of cooperative gamification has to date barely been explored. With a specific focus on these shortcomings, this dissertation presents several studies to advance the understanding of using gamification in crowdsourcing systems

Is Adaptive Gamification just a Theoretical Fairytale? An Experiment in a Text-based Adventure Game for Data Crowdsourcing

Gamification approaches are not always effective and vary in their success. Several studies suggest that unexpected results of effectiveness are related to a dearth of personalization of gamified systems following a one-size-fits-all (OSFA) approach. Although research indicates that gamification design that is dynamically adjusted to the preferences of the person using the system (i.e., adaptive gamification) can positively impact behavioral or motivational outcomes, there is still a gap in understanding the effectiveness of adaptive gamification. This work aims to advance our understanding on the impact of adaptive gamification on motivational and behavioral outcomes in the context of gamified crowdsourcing. To this end, an experiment (n=135) is conducted with a text-based adventure game that employs different versions of a narrative designed to address the specific needs of previously conceptualized distinct types of users (i.e., Hexad user types). The results show that adaptive gamification does not lead to higher behavioral outcomes, i.e., increased crowdsourcing participation, or motivational outcomes. Conclusively, this work challenges the common assumption of adaptive gamification based on player types being worth the effort. Moreover, the results show that general need satisfaction is associated with increasing motivational outcomes, independent of a user’s player type. Therefore, this work suggests focusing on different perceptions of need satisfaction being required by individuals rather than focusing on player types which are abstractions of reality

Designing Cooperative Gamification: Conceptualization and Prototypical Implementation

Organizations deploy gamification in CSCW systems to enhance motivation and behavioral outcomes of users. However, gamification approaches often cause competition between users, which might be inappropriate for working environments that seek cooperation. Drawing on the social interdependence theory, this paper provides a classification for gamification features and insights about the design of cooperative gamification. Using the example of an innovation community of a German engineering company, we present the design of a cooperative gamification approach and results from a first experimental evaluation. The findings indicate that the developed gamification approach has positive effects on perceived enjoyment and the intention towards knowledge sharing in the considered innovation community. Besides our conceptual contribution , our findings suggest that cooperative gamification may be beneficial for cooperative working environments and represents a promising field for future research

Designing Gamification for Sustainable Employee Behavior: Insights on Employee Motivations, Design Features and Gamification Elements

Encouraging sustainable employee behavior is critical for companies in the face of increasing societal pressure towards sustainability. While gamification has been shown to influence employee behavior effectively, current attempts to design gamification for sustainability in the workplace largely neglect the importance of understanding personal factors and contextual characteristics. This work explores employees' motivations for sustainable behavior and expectations for design features through in-depth interviews with 27 employees from different SMEs. Our results show that many employees tend to be egoistically motivated, suggesting the design of appropriate narratives and individualistic-oriented design features. Employees expected utilitarian, hedonistic, and social design features that primarily serve to support them in achieving personal sustainability goals while highlighting that gamification at work should also integrate seamlessly with existing work routines. We contribute to gamification design research by discussing the particularities of the workplace sustainability context and shedding new light on involving users in gamification design

How game features give rise to altruism and collective action? Implications for cultivating cooperation by gamification

Due to the general gamification of our culture and society as well as the proliferation of games in our everyday activities, people are increasingly looking at games and gamification as a source for cooperation and other prosocial behaviors. However, not all game features lead to increased cohesion, cooperation or collaboration between people. While some games indeed are geared for cooperation, majority of games also aim toward competition or just non-social activity. Therefore, a prominent research problem exists in understanding how different game and gamification design may lead to altruistic sentiment and collective action. In this study, we investigated how the engagement with cooperative game features relates to the emergence of altruism and whether altruism leads to the formation of we-intentions in a gaming context. We employed data gathered among players of the augmented reality game Ingress (N=206) and analyzed the data using PLS-SEM. The results show that game features can give rise to altruism and that altruism can invoke we-intentions via cooperative goal structures (we-goals) of individuals. In addition to providing important insights regarding how cooperation emerges within games, this study provides implications for cultivating cooperation by gamification

How to Gamify? A Method For Designing Gamification

During recent years, gamification has become a popular method of enriching information technologies. Popular business analysts have made promising predictions about penetration of gamification, however, it has also been estimated that most gamification efforts will fail due to poor understanding of how gamification should be designed and implemented. Therefore, in this paper we seek to advance the understanding of best practices related to the gamification design process. We approach this research problem via a design science research approach; firstly, by synthesizing the current body of literature on gamification design methods and interviewing 25 gamification experts. Secondly, we develop a method for gamification design, based on the gathered knowledge. Finally, we conduct an evaluation of the method via interviews of 10 gamification experts. The results indicate that the developed method is comprehensive, complete and provides practical utility. We deliver a comprehensive overview of gamification guidelines and shed novel insights into the overall nature of the gamification development and design discourse