Gamification in social marketing campaigns : an investigation into the effect of badges and a community element in gamification on a social marketing campaign aimed at increasing walking amongst adults

Abstract

Gamification is an emerging concept which is slowly gaining traction in multiple areas. There seems, however, to be lack of empirical evidence on its usage in social marketing scenarios. Considering that both gamification and social marketing focus on behavioural change it seems that social marketing and gamification have the potential to be combined. For this reason, this research examines the impact of badge and community elements within a social marketing context aimed at a pro walking intervention. The study was carried out in the form of a quantitative experiment design. This design made use of three test groups, a single control group which made use of a non-gamified application and two experimental groups which utilised the same gamified application. Each group was made up of thirty individuals, thus totalling to 90 participants. The study was split into three phases; phase one was an entry survey designed to create a baseline as well as gather some basic descriptive information about the participants. Phase two was a five-week experiment whereby each participant utilised an application to record their daily step count as well as administer the gamification element. Phase three was an exit survey which measured if any change had occurred especially regarding motivation and app effectiveness. It was found that while motivational differences between the three test groups were minimal, the community group did in fact, perform significantly better than the badge group. There were also positive correlations between community aspects with increased motivation thus suggesting that communities within pro walking scenarios can enhance a pro-walking campaign. There was also a surprising negative correlation between females and the community. Response to badges was less significant than was expected, however it was found that there is a larger preference to shorter term badges. Badges were also found to help increase focus on walking more. This paper, therefore, builds on pre-existing literature by testing gamification elements in the context of social marketing campaigns relating to pro walking interventions. More specifically it identifies what elements have the most significant effect on the target activity, and that they can in fact be useful in a pro walking campaign.