Using gamification to enhance user motivation: The influence of gender and age

Abstract

The number of solo-self-employed and persons with flexible, individualized working conditions has grown over the last years. An online coaching application is currently being developed for this target group to increase well-being, reduce stress, and convey job design skills. An important point in designing this application is to keep users’ motivation high. A possible solution is gamification. To investigate possible effects of gamification, we asked 300 participants from our target group in an online survey how they would be motivated by gamification elements in an online coaching application. In this paper we report results regarding the influence of age and gender on the effects of gamification on user motivation. The results show that the use of progress bars, collecting points, and the activation of new content is seen as the most motivating. Male users would feel more motivated by gamification than female participants. Furthermore, motivation through gamification decreases with age.