Exploring the impact of extrinsic motivation on users’ intention to continue using a gamified tourism commerce platform

Abstract

Gamification has obtained increasing attention in a number of fields including management, marketing, education, and health care. In the tourism context, the users of online tourism services are fond of online application platforms that are enjoyable and interesting, where gamification can be applied. Besides, with the increasing types and amount of online tourism platforms, the user churn rate is very high. Therefore, it is crucial for online tourism platforms to keep the tourists from switching to other platforms and explore users’ motivations for using the platform. However, there are relatively few studies concerning the effects of the extrinsic motivation of gamification on users’ psychological needs for using online tourism platforms in detail. Based on self-determination theory and gamification literature, this research identifies four different types of extrinsic motivations and investigates their effects on users’ willingness to continue using gamified online travel platforms. Based on the questionnaire data, this research found that: 1) the four extrinsic motivations positively influence the satisfaction of consumers’ basic psychological needs, but have weaker impacts on competence needs; 2) the satisfaction of consumers’ three basic psychological needs is positively related to their intention to consistently use gamified travel platforms.