The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research

By Jonna Koivisto, Juho Hamari. International Journal of Information Management, 2019

1,591 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Today, our reality and lives are increasingly game-like, not only because games have become a pervasive part of our lives, but also because activities, systems and services are increasingly gamified. Gamification refers to designing information systems to afford similar experiences and motivations as games do, and consequently, attempting to affect user behavior. In recent years, popularity of gamification has skyrocketed and manifested in growing numbers of gamified applications, as well as a rapidly increasing amount of research. However, this vein of research has mainly advanced without an agenda, theoretical guidance or a clear picture of the field. To make the picture more coherent, we provide a comprehensive review of the gamification research (N = 819 studies) and analyze the research models and results in empirical studies on gamification. While the results in general lean towards positive findings about the effectiveness of gamification, the amount of mixed results is remarkable. Furthermore, education, health and crowdsourcing as well as points, badges and leaderboards persist as the most common contexts and ways of implementing gamification. Concurrently, gamification research still lacks coherence in research models, and a consistency in the variables and theoretical foundations. As a final contribution of the review, we provide a comprehensive discussion, consisting of 15 future research trajectories, on future agenda for the growing vein of literature on gamification and gameful systems within the information system science field.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Information Systems and Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/73e0df4757253a56ea1fbcfa600eb5d3f838508f

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Citations in the corpus

Gamification of education and learning: A review of empirical literature (2018, background): “The same affordances have been noted to be the most frequently implemented ones in gamification research on a general level (Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014; Koivisto & Hamari, 2017) as well as in the context of education (Nah et al., 2014; Dicheva et al., 2015; Dichev et al., 2017).”
Tailored gamification in education: A literature review and future agenda (2022, methodology): “Following the Kitchenham (2004) protocol, we defined our search string based on the recent studies on gamification and educational technologies (e.g., Bitten-court et al., 2016; Hamari et al., 2014, 2016; Santos et al., 2018; Koivisto and Hamari2019; Klock et al., 2020).”
Does gamification affect brand engagement and equity? A study in online brand communities (2020, positive): “…-related, achievement -related, and social interaction -related dimensions (2007; Hamari & Tuunanen, 2014; Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014; Koivisto & Hamari, 2019; Peng, Lin, Pfeiffer, & Winn, 2012; Snodgrass, Dengah, Lacy, & Fagan, 2013; Yee, 2006; Yee, Ducheneaut, & Nelson, 2012) which…”
Prescriptive analytics: Literature review and research challenges (2020, neutral): “…& Lin, 2018; Seifert, Seifert, & Protopappa-Sieke, 2013), while similar methodologies have been followed in other domains (Duan, Edwards, & Dwivedi, 2019; Ismagilova, Hughes, Dwivedi, & Raman, 2019; Koivisto & Hamari, 2019; Senyo, Liu, & Effah, 2019; Tamilmani, Rana, Prakasam, & Dwivedi, 2019).”
Evolution of Consumption: A Psychological Ownership Framework (2020, background): “…of heart rate and blood pressure measured once during an annual physical, are often now continuously collected and displayed in real time on wearable devices or through application dashboards with animation, audio, and gamification (Koivisto and Hamari 2019; Lurie and Mason 2007; see Table 5).”