Gamified digital services: How gameful experiences drive continued service usage

Abstract

Recently, many digital service providers started to gamify their services to promote continued service usage. Although gamification has drawn attention in both practice and research, it remains unclear how users experience gamified services and how these gameful experiences may increase service usage. This research adopts a user-centered perspective to reveal the underlying gameful experience dimensions during gamified service usage and how they drive continued service usage. Findings from Study 1 – a survey with 148 app-users – reveal four essential gameful experience dimensions (skill development, social comparison, social connectedness, and expressive freedom) and how they relate to game mechanics. Study 2, which is based on a survey among 821 app-users, shows that gameful experiences trigger continued service usage through two different types of motivation, namely autonomous and controlled motivation.