An Experiment on the Effects of Gamification on Motivation and Participation in an Idea Contest

Gamification is currently deployed as a vehicle to foster participation in innovation contests often based on the assumption that it enhances intrinsic motivation. However, to date there is no holistic quantitative study... [ view full abstract ]

Gamification is currently deployed as a vehicle to foster participation in innovation contests often based on the assumption that it enhances intrinsic motivation. However, to date there is no holistic quantitative study investigating whether increased motivation or performance can be attributed to common gamification measures distinguishing points, social points and badges. We investigate this relationship in a field experiment with 446 university students. Participants were confronted with the same ideation task and could post answers and comment on five different platform conditions over a period of five days. We were thus able to measure the direct influence of points, social points and badges, as well as combination of all three elements, on the intrinsic motivation and performance of participants. The results show that game elements can increase performance, however solely with respect to the number of comments posted. Furthermore, game elements had no significant main effects on intrinsic motivation and need satisfaction, competence need satisfaction, or relatedness need satisfaction. We conclude that gamification is more suitable to increase the performance of effortless tasks such as commenting. Additionally, in line with psychology literature, game elements as extrinsic rewards have no power to influence intrinsic motivation.