Does gamification increase engagement with online programs? A systematic review

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Abstract

Background

Engagement in online programs is difficult to maintain. Gamification is the recent trend that offers to increase engagement through the inclusion of game-like features like points and badges, in non-game contexts. This review will answer the following question, ‘Are gamification strategies effective in increasing engagement in online programs?’

Method

Eight databases (Web of Science, PsycINFO, Medline, INSPEC, ERIC, Cochrane Library, Business Source Complete and ACM Digital Library) were searched from 2010 to the 28 ^th of October 2015 using a comprehensive search strategy. Eligibility criteria was based on the PICOS format, where “population” included adults, “intervention” involved an online program or smart phone application that included at least one gamification feature. “Comparator” was a control group, “outcomes” included engagement and “downstream” outcomes which occurred as a result of engagement; and “study design” included experimental studies from peer-reviewed sources. Effect sizes (Cohens d and 95% confidence intervals) were also calculated.

Results

1017 studies were identified from database searches following the removal of duplicates, of which 15 met the inclusion criteria. The studies involved a total of 10,499 participants, and were commonly undertaken in tertiary education contexts. Engagement metrics included time spent (n = 5), volume of contributions (n = 11) and occasions visited to the software (n = 4); as well as downstream behaviours such as performance (n = 4) and healthy behaviours (n = 1). Effect sizes typically ranged from medium to large in direct engagement and downstream behaviours, with 12 out of 15 studies finding positive significant effects in favour of gamification.

Conclusion

Gamification is effective in increasing engagement in online programs. Key recommendations for future research into gamification are provided. In particular, rigorous study designs are required to fully examine gamification’s effects and determine how to best achieve sustained engagement.

Related collections

Most cited references 15

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Is Open Access

Gamification: What It Is and Why It Matters to Digital Health Behavior Change Developers

Brian Cugelman (2013)

This editorial provides a behavioral science view on gamification and health behavior change, describes its principles and mechanisms, and reviews some of the evidence for its efficacy. Furthermore, this editorial explores the relation between gamification and behavior change frameworks used in the health sciences and shows how gamification principles are closely related to principles that have been proven to work in health behavior change technology. Finally, this editorial provides criteria that can be used to assess when gamification provides a potentially promising framework for digital health interventions.

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The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective.

Stephen Garcia, Avishalom Tor, Tyrone Schiff (2013)

Social comparison-the tendency to self-evaluate by comparing ourselves to others-is an important source of competitive behavior. We propose a new model that distinguishes between individual and situational factors that increase social comparison and thus lead to a range of competitive attitudes and behavior. Individual factors are those that vary from person to person: the relevance of the performance dimension, the similarity of rivals, and their relationship closeness to the individual, as well as the various individual differences variables relating to social comparison more generally. Situational factors, conversely, are those factors on the social comparison landscape that affect similarly situated individuals: proximity to a standard (i.e., near the number 1 ranking vs. far away), the number of competitors (i.e., few vs. many), social category fault lines (i.e., disputes across vs. within social categories), and more. The distinction between individual and situational factors also helps chart future directions for social comparison research and generates new vistas across psychology and related disciplines.

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Transforming homo economicus into homo ludens: A field experiment on gamification in a utilitarian peer-to-peer trading service

Juho Hamari (2013)

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Author and article information

Contributors

Frederic Amblard: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date (Electronic): 31 March 2017

Publication date Collection: 2017

Volume: 12

Issue: 3

Electronic Location Identifier: e0173403

Affiliations

[1 ]School of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

[2 ]Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA), School of Health Sciences & Sansom Institute for Health Research, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole, FRANCE

Author notes

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceptualization: JL JK KB CM.
Data curation: JL JK KB CM.
Formal analysis: JL JK KB JR SE CM.
Investigation: JL JK KB JR SE CM.
Methodology: JL JK KB CM.
Project administration: JL JK KB CM.
Supervision: JK KB CM.
Validation: JL JK KB JR SE CM.
Visualization: JL JK KB CM.
Writing – original draft: JL JK KB JR SE CM.
Writing – review & editing: JL JK KB JR SE CM.

* E-mail: carol.maher@ 123456unisa.edu.au

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-16-45655

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0173403

PMC ID: 5376078

PubMed ID: 28362821

SO-VID: c7a447ee-53c1-43a6-895b-89bf6c903782

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 17 November 2016

Date accepted : 14 February 2017

Page count

Figures: 2, Tables: 2, Pages: 19

Funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Custom metadata

Data Availability The dataset is now publicly available on the University of South Australia's Research Data Access Portal, and the DOI is: https://doi.org/10.4226/78/58cb4cc9cd1b3.