Gamification does not automatically increase user engagement

Gamification has in recent years become one of the most hotly debated trends in technology and marketing. The use of game design elements is often regarded as the silver bullet in engaging customers and users. However, so far there has not been much empirical evidence that show the effects of gamification. Researcher Juho Hamari from the Game Research Lab at the School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland, has conducted a 1.5-year long field experiment on whether badges, which have been the primary mechanism in gamification, had an effect on the usage activity and quality within a service.

The term ‘gamification’ refers to service design that aims to create gameful experiences in contexts that are not normally thought of as games.

The field experiment was conducted by gamifying an internet peer-to-peer trading service, Sharetribe, where the users connect with their community and recycle goods. The users received different badges for different activities, such as trade proposals, accepted transactions and posted comments. The field experiment especially focused on whether providing users with clear goals and enabling social features by comparing badges among users affected the individual numbers of trade proposals, accepted transactions, comments and overall user activity.

The results showed that the mere implementation of badges did not automatically increase user activity. However, those users who actively followed up on the accumulation of their own badges and compared them with the badges of other users were also more active users in general and created and accepted more transactions.

The data of the study consisted of the usage data of 3,234 users for 1.5 years from December 2010 to the end of July 2012. Sharetribe is different from the traditional trading services in that it is targeted to narrow local communities, such as organisations and town districts. The users can sell goods, but they can also, for example, borrow things or organise carpooling.

The study was conducted in cooperation with School of Business at Aalto University. The research results are published in the journal Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. You can read the pre-print version of the article online at www.sciencedirect.com/.

Please cite the article in press as:
Hamari, J. (2013). Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens: A Field Experiment on Gamification in a Utilitarian Peer-To-Peer Trading Service. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12. doi: 10.1016/j.elerap.2013.01.004.

For more information please contact:
Juho Hamari
Researcher
School of Information Sciences
University of Tampere
tel. +358 50 318 6861
juho.hamari@uta.fi