Reward‐based or meaningful gaming? A field study on game mechanics and serious games for sustainability

Abstract

Despite investigating digital gaming for commercial purposes, less scholarly attention exists on digital gaming for societal purposes such as sustainability (“serious games”). The current study investigates whether a serious game can enhance sustainability marketing outcomes, including knowledge, value‐in‐behavior, and behavioral intentions longitudinally (pre‐gameplay to post‐gameplay). Further, the study seeks to understand the influence of reward‐based and meaningful game mechanics on these sustainability marketing outcomes. We recruited 387 participants for a week‐long field study using a serious game which encourages household energy conservation. The findings show that the serious game significantly increased sustainability knowledge, value‐in‐behavior, and sustainable behavioral intention after one week. Reward‐based game mechanics (badges and trophies) significantly influenced sustainability knowledge and indirectly influenced value‐in‐behavior via sustainability knowledge, whereas reward‐based (points) and meaningful (educational messages) game mechanics had little impact. The results empirically support the conceptual model theorization—underpinned by a “do–learn–feel” behavioral learning approach—which possessed superior fit to a “do–feel–learn” rival model. This study provides novel insights regarding eliciting value‐in‐behavior longitudinally within serious games. Our multidimensional approach to assessing reward‐based game mechanics extends prior studies and suggests that higher‐tier rewards are more influential than lower‐tiered rewards to achieve sustainability marketing outcomes. We further demonstrate that reward‐based game mechanics outperform meaningful game mechanics at influencing desired outcomes, challenging existing gaming literature.

Motivations of playing digital games: A review and research agenda

“…Research on digital gaming has been evident in journals across various fields including science, business and humanities. A recent special issue from Psychology & Marketing on “Digital Gaming and Marketing” (Phau et al,) has published papers in the area of virtual reality games (Bender & Sung, 2021), gamification via mobile applications (Kunkel et al, 2021), gamers’ divergent behaviour (Sharma et al, 2021), game mechanics and serous games for sustainability (Whittaker et al, 2021), game streaming (Yoganathan et al, 2021), game experience (Wang & Hang, 2021), and AI powered avatar (Butt et al, 2021). While searching in the databases, we came across hundreds of journals that published papers on digital games.…”

Gamification as a Customer Loyalty Tool. Evidence from the Italian Banking Industry

“…It is precisely thanks to these rewards that, in a certain sense, "addiction" is generated, and users are more inclined to commit to achieving their goals. The field of eco-sustainability has recently experienced numerous examples of gamification (Gatti, et al 2019, Whittaker et al 2021. The intent in this area is to stimulate people to change their behavior, towards a style more focused on sustainability and environmental protection.…”

Review of Demand Response and Energy Communities in Serious Games

“…To give an incentive to play well in the game and thus encourage the player to change their behavior in real life, all of the presented games featured some kinds of in-game rewards to give the player a sensation of achievement and progress. These kinds of rewards, such as badges or other virtual collectibles, are said to have a bigger educational impact than educational messages, such as energy saving tips, which were present in some of the games [42]. Games with a direct link to real-life events, such as the current energy consumption of the player's residence, can easily gamify any energy savings made with, e.g., in-game badges and trophies of achievement.…”