Workplace Psychology and Gamification: Theory and Application

The objective of gamification is to engage and motivate people in non-gaming contexts, for example, at the workplace. However, practitioners often understand gamification as the introduction of extrinsic rewards (e.g., points, badges) as kind of non-monetary valuta and, thus, inexpensive way of rewarding people. Although these approaches work to some extent, successful and sustainable applications of game design elements foster the intrinsic motivation of people. The investigation of intrinsic motivation, human satisfaction, and well-being has been a long-term research field in work and organizational psychology. In this chapter, we describe key theories from the domain of positive and workplace psychology. Key resources and factors of these theories are then linked to gamification and game design elements. This analysis results in a general framework for quantitative gamification research which has been partially evaluated with one of our ERP gamification applications.