How Game Features Give Rise to Altruism and Collective Action? Implications for Cultivating Cooperation by Gamification

Due to the general gamification of our culture and society as well as the proliferation of games in our everyday activities, people are increasingly looking at games and gamification as a source for cooperation and other prosocial behaviors. However, not all game features lead to increased cohesion, cooperation or collaboration between people. While some games indeed are geared for cooperation, majority of games also aim toward competition or just non-social activity. Therefore, a prominent research problem exists in understanding how different game and gamification design may lead to altruistic sentiment and collective action. In this study, we investigated how the engagement with cooperative game features relates to the emergence of altruism and whether altruism leads to the formation of we-intentions in a gaming context. We employed data gathered among players of the augmented reality game Ingress (N=206) and analyzed the data using PLS-SEM. The results show that game features can give rise to altruism and that altruism can invoke we-intentions via cooperative goal structures (we-goals) of individuals. In addition to providing important insights regarding how cooperation emerges within games, this study provides implications for cultivating cooperation by gamification.

[1]  David W. Johnson,et al.  Cooperation and Competition: Theory and Research , 1989 .

[2]  L. Keller,et al.  The evolution of cooperation and altruism – a general framework and a classification of models , 2006, Journal of evolutionary biology.

[3]  Juho Hamari,et al.  International Journal of Information Management Why Do People Use Gamification Services? , 2022 .

[4]  R. Bagozzi.  On the Concept of Intentional Social Action in Consumer Behavior , 2000 .

[5]  L. L. Shaw,et al.  Evidence for Altruism: Toward a Pluralism of Prosocial Motives , 1991 .

[6]  Alexander Maedche,et al.  How games induce cooperation? A study on the relationship between game features and we-intentions in an augmented reality game , 2017, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[7]  Tatsuo Nakajima,et al.  Designing motivation using persuasive ambient mirrors , 2011, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[8]  Kenton O'Hara,et al.  Social Impact , 2019, Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics.

[9]  John Fender,et al.  Altruism and Economics , 2012 .

[10]  Matthew K. O. Lee,et al.  Online social networks: Why do students use facebook? , 2011, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[11]  Hsiu-Fen Lin,et al.  Effects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on employee knowledge sharing intentions , 2007, J. Inf. Sci..

[12]  Igor Dolgov,et al.  Effects of cooperative gaming and avatar customization on subsequent spontaneous helping behavior , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[13]  C. Fornell,et al.  Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. , 1981 .

[14]  Samer Faraj,et al.  Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Networks of Practice , 2005, MIS Q..

[15]  Tobias Greitemeyer,et al.  Playing Prosocial Video Games Increases the Accessibility of Prosocial Thoughts , 2011, The Journal of social psychology.

[16]  Mark Keith,et al.  Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 10 Issue 4 12-2018 Team Video Gaming for Team Building : Effects on Team Performance , 2018 .

[17]  Mira Lee,et al.  The Effects of a Serious Game on Role-Taking and Willingness to Help , 2010 .

[18]  Robert B. Cialdini,et al.  Altruism or Egoism? That Is (Still) the Question , 1991 .

[19]  M. Deutsch.  A Theory of Co-operation and Competition , 1949 .

[20]  Dean Tjosvold,et al.  Organizational partnerships in China: self-interest, goal interdependence, and opportunism. , 2005, The Journal of applied psychology.

[21]  Daniel J. Veit,et al.  Gamification - A Novel Phenomenon or a New Wrapping for Existing Concepts? , 2015, ICIS.

[22]  N. Sanders.  An empirical study of the impact of e-business technologies on organizational collaboration and performance , 2007 .

[23]  Hichang Cho,et al.  Testing an integrative theoretical model of knowledge-sharing behavior in the context of Wikipedia , 2010, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[24]  T. Greitemeyer,et al.  Video Games Do Affect Social Outcomes , 2014, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[25]  Wynne W. Chin.  The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. , 1998 .

[26]  Jan Dirk L. Fijnheer,et al.  Gamification , 2019, Encyclopedia of Education and Information Technologies.

[27]  Juho Hamari,et al.  Does gamification satisfy needs? A study on the relationship between gamification features and intrinsic need satisfaction , 2019, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[28]  D. Tjosvold.  Cooperative and competitive goal approach to conflict: Accomplishments and challenges. , 1998 .

[29]  Raimo Tuomela,et al.  Joint intention, we-mode and I-mode , 2006 .

[30]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  Intentional social action in virtual communities , 2002 .

[31]  Atreyi Kankanhalli,et al.  Contributing Knowledge to Electronic Knowledge Repositories: An Empirical Investigation , 2005, MIS Q..

[32]  Radhika Santhanam,et al.  Digital Games and Beyond: What Happens When Players Compete , 2013, MIS Q..

[33]  Hsien-Tung Tsai,et al.  Contribution Behavior in Virtual Communities: Cogntiive, Emotional, and Social Influences , 2014, MIS Q..

[34]  M. McLure Wasko,et al.  "It is what one does": why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice , 2000, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[35]  David R. Ewoldsen,et al.  Helping Behaviors During Video Game Play , 2013, J. Media Psychol. Theor. Methods Appl..

[36]  Juho Hamari,et al.  Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification , 2014, 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[37]  Matthew K. O. Lee,et al.  An Investigation into Contribution I-Intention and We-Intention in Open Web-Based Encyclopedia: Roles of Joint Commitment and Mutual Agreement , 2009, ICIS.

[38]  Marko Sarstedt,et al.  PLS-SEM: Indeed a Silver Bullet , 2011 .

[39]  Magy Seif El-Nasr,et al.  Understanding and evaluating cooperative games , 2010, CHI.

[40]  Joseph Feller,et al.  Does Heart or Head Rule Donor Behaviors in Charitable Crowdfunding Markets? , 2016, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[41]  Ingrid Poncin,et al.  The Engagement Process During Value Co-Creation: Gamification in New Product-Development Platforms , 2017, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[42]  Thomas W. Malone,et al.  Toward a Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction , 1981, Cogn. Sci..

[43]  Alexander Maedche,et al.  Cooperation or competition - When do people contribute more? A field experiment on gamification of crowdsourcing , 2019, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[44]  E. A. Locke,et al.  New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory , 2006 .

[45]  James C. Anderson,et al.  STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING IN PRACTICE: A REVIEW AND RECOMMENDED TWO-STEP APPROACH , 1988 .

[46]  David W. Johnson,et al.  Cooperation and the Use of Technology , 2007 .

[47]  Chih-Chien Wang,et al.  Helping Others in Online Games: Prosocial Behavior in Cyberspace , 2008, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[48]  Juho Hamari,et al.  The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research , 2019, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[49]  Alexander Maedche,et al.  Designing Cooperative Gamification: Conceptualization and Prototypical Implementation , 2017, CSCW.

[50]  Utpal M. Dholakia,et al.  Open Source Software User Communities: A Study of Participation in Linux User Groups , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[51]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  Multiple routes for social influence: The role of compliance, internalization and social identity. , 2002 .

[52]  Paul Benjamin Lowry,et al.  Partial Least Squares (PLS) Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for Building and Testing Behavioral Causal Theory: When to Choose It and How to Use It , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

[53]  Alexander Maedche,et al.  Gamified crowdsourcing: Conceptualization, literature review, and future agenda , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[54]  Juho Hamari,et al.  Computer Games and Organization Studies , 2017 .

[55]  Lennart E. Nacke,et al.  From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification" , 2011, MindTrek.

[56]  R. Tuomela.  The Importance of Us: A Philosophical Study of Basic Social Notions , 1995 .

[57]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  Strangers and friends: collaborative play in world of warcraft , 2006, CSCW '06.