Understanding The Influence Of Gamification Design On Users' Intention To Use Mobile Financing Applications

In February 2011,gamification was presented as a new topic of discussion at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco,USA.Since then,gamification has been applied by information system developers and practitioners in a broad range of industries,such as marketing,enterprise management,e-commerce,health,and education,to deeply engage people in their product and service.Since the past few years has witnessed rapid growth of mobile financing,internet financing enterprises and institutions have also begun to apply gamification design mechanics and techniques in their mobile application and financing services,hoping to change mobile financing users' behavior and improve potential users' acceptance and use of their service.In the academic field,the attention that gamification has received in recent years has also increased.Through a systematic survey of the rapidly emerging academic literature on gamification,we find that research on the definition,classification,and application of gamification design has been fruitful while user behaviors in gamified information systems are still to be explored.For example,current research on gamification design elements are relatively limited to PBL(i.e.,points,badges,and rankings)so other categories of design elements are not fully examined.Besides,most research studies in gamification utilize case study method and derive their results directly from questionnaires and interviews with little exploration on the influence mechanism of gamification design on users' emotion and behaviors.In response to this gap,the cuirent study builds on a variety of perspectives,including affordance theory,self-determination theory,technology acceptance model and theory of perceived risk to develop our model regarding the influence of gamification on mobile financing application users' emotions and behavior intention.Four categories of gamification elements or mechanics in mobile financing apps are summarized based on the gaming literature.We employ orthogonal experiment design method to generate eight different scenarios and accordingly design scenario-based questionnaires.A total of 270 valid samples are collected and our research model is tested using partial least square structure equation modelling(PLS-SEM).Our empirical results show that users' intention to use mobile financing application is positively influenced by user's need satisfaction(autonomy,competence,and relatedness)and perceived enjoyment,and is negatively influenced by perceived risk;The interface graphics affordance(ING)of the mobile financing apps positively influences user's perceived autonomy and perceived enjoyment;the progress paths affordance(PRO)the growth progress positively influences user's perceived autonomy,perceived competence and perceived enjoyment;the reward and feedback affordance(REW)positively influences user's perceived competence,perceived relatedness and perceived enjoyment;the social connection affordance(SOC)positively influences user's perceived competence,perceived relatedness and perceived enjoyment,while at the same time will increase user's perceived risk;the personalization affordance(PER)and technology novelty affordance(TEC)has a positive influence on user's perceived enjoyment,while personalization affordance at the same time will increase user's perceived risk;the information transparency(TRA)has a positive impact on users'perceived autonomy and reduces users' perceived risk.Our study provides several contributions for research we build on a variety of theories in different disciplinary to understand the influence of gamification design on users' intention to use mobile financing applications.Also,this is the first time to the knowledge that gamification constructs are examined in a mobile financing application context,thus enriching the existing literature on this subject and providing new insights into how gamification influences user behavior in IS system.Implications for gamification researchers,practitioners and IS system developers are provided.