Several studies have indicated the need for personalizing gamified systems to users' personalities. However, mapping user personality onto design elements is difficult. Hexad is a gamification user types model that attempts this mapping but lacks a standard procedure to assess user preferences. Therefore, we created a 24-items survey response scale to score users' preferences towards the six different motivations in the Hexad framework. We used internal and testretest reliability analysis, as well as factor analysis, to validate this new scale. Further analysis revealed significant associations of the Hexad user types with the Big Five personality traits. In addition, a correlation analysis confirmed the framework's validity as a measure of user preference towards different game design elements. This scale instrument contributes to games user research because it enables accurate measures of user preference in gamification.

Virtual Reality (VR) is used for a variety of applications ranging from entertainment to psychological medicine. VR has been demonstrated to influence higher order cognitive functions and cortical plasticity, with implications on phobia and stroke treatment. An integral part for successful VR is a high sense of presence – a feeling of ‘being there’ in the virtual scenario. The underlying cognitive and perceptive functions causing presence in VR scenarios are however not completely known. It is evident that the brain function is influenced by drugs, such as ethanol, potentially confounding cortical plasticity, also in VR. As ethanol is ubiquitous and forms part of daily life, understanding the effects of ethanol on presence and user experience, the attitudes and emotions about using VR applications, is important. This exploratory study aims at contributing towards an understanding of how low-dose ethanol intake influences presence, user experience and their relationship in a validated VR context. It was found that low-level ethanol consumption did influence presence and user experience, but on a minimal level. In contrast, correlations between presence and user experience were strongly influenced by low-dose ethanol. Ethanol consumption may consequently alter cognitive and perceptive functions related to the connections between presence and user experience.

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Electricity demand-side management (DSM) programs are becoming increasingly important to energy system managers in advanced industrialized countries, especially those with high renewable energy penetration. As energy user participation is paramount for their success but has proven to be difficult to obtain, we explore the usefulness of the 'social license' concept, originally developed in the mining sector, to refer to the process of creating acceptance in DSM programs aimed at managing or controlling household energy resources such EVs, batteries, and heating and cooling devices. We argue that analyzing the attainment or lack of 'social license' may be useful to energy policy-makers and researchers for understanding public concerns with not only supply-side energy resources, but also DSM. We do so by (1) drawing attention to potential frictions between demands for flexibility on the one hand and social practices and habits on the other; (2) attending to the ways that users'