ArticleJMIR serious games2024
Gamification of Behavior Change: Mathematical Principle and Proof-of-Concept Study.
Article in JMIR serious games, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Curiosity in a Novel Virtual Reality Scenario and Its Association With Symptoms of Depression: Observational Pilot Investigation.JMIR formative research · 2026Observational
- Redefining Gamification for Cardiovascular Prevention in High-Risk Cancer Survivors.JACC. CardioOncology · 2026Article
- Signatures of reinforcement learning in natural behavior.Current directions in psychological science · 2025Article
- Playful Antisedentary Interactions for Online Meeting Scenarios: A Research Through Design Approach.JMIR serious games · 2025Article
- A Personalized, Transdiagnostic Smartphone App (Mello) Targeting Repetitive Negative Thinking for Depression and Anxiety: Qualitative Analysis of Young People's Experience.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMany people want to build good habits to become healthier, live longer, or become happier but struggle to change their behavior. Gamification can make behavior change easier by awarding points for the desired behavior and deducting points for its omission.
objectiveIn this study, we introduced a principled mathematical method for determining how many points should be awarded or deducted for the enactment or omission of the desired behavior, depending on when and how often the person has succeeded versus failed to enact it in the past. We called this approach optimized gamification of behavior change.
methodsAs a proof of concept, we designed a chatbot that applies our optimized gamification method to help people build healthy water-drinking habits. We evaluated the effectiveness of this gamified intervention in a 40-day field experiment with 1 experimental group (n=43) that used the chatbot with optimized gamification and 2 active control groups for which the chatbot's optimized gamification feature was disabled. For the first control group (n=48), all other features were available, including verbal feedback. The second control group (n=51) received no feedback or reminders. We measured the strength of all participants' water-drinking habits before, during, and after the intervention using the Self-Report Habit Index and by asking participants on how many days of the previous week they enacted the desired habit. In addition, all participants provided daily reports on whether they enacted their water-drinking intention that day.
resultsA Poisson regression analysis revealed that, during the intervention, users who received feedback based on optimized gamification enacted the desired behavior more often (mean 14.71, SD 6.57 times) than the active (mean 11.64, SD 6.38 times; P<.001; incidence rate ratio=0.80, 95% CI 0.71-0.91) or passive (mean 11.64, SD 5.43 times; P=.001; incidence rate ratio=0.78, 95% CI 0.69-0.89) control groups. The Self-Report Habit Index score significantly increased in all conditions (P<.001 in all cases) but did not differ between the experimental and control conditions (P>.11 in all cases). After the intervention, the experimental group performed the desired behavior as often as the 2 control groups (P≥.17 in all cases).
conclusionsOur findings suggest that optimized gamification can be used to make digital behavior change interventions more effective.
trial registrationOpen Science Framework (OSF) H7JN8; https://osf.io/h7jn8.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.