Abstract
Although gamification in the workplace is burgeoning, organizations frequently have difficulty sustaining user engagement with a gamified information system (IS). The focus of this study is how a gamified IS in the workplace engages users and encourages them to continue system use. By proposing the concepts of flow experience (FE) and aesthetic experience (AE) as different ways to provide deep and meaningful user engagement, this study develops a model that explores the antecedents of FE and AE and their roles in explaining an individual’s continuance intention to use of a gamified IS. The model is tested using data collected from 178 users of a gamified IS in a global consulting company. The results demonstrate that although FE and AE are complementary forces, AE is more salient than FE for explaining continuance intention. The research proposes AE as a parsimonious yet powerful construct that extends the research on user engagement. The findings contribute to research on gamification by shifting scholarly attention from deep engagement characterized by FE to meaningful engagement characterized by AE.
Funding
This research was supported in part by grant No. CityU 11531016 from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR and NRF-2013S1A3A2054667 from the Korean Government awarded to the first author. This research was supported in part by grant No. CityU 11507815 from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR awarded to the fourth author.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Ayoung Suh
Ayoung Suh ([email protected]; corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Media and Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from Ewha Womans University, Korea. Her research interests include virtual collaboration, virtual communities and teams, virtual identity, and enterprise gamification. Her papers have been published in Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Associations for Information Systems, Journal of Information Science, Computers in Human Behavior, and others.
Christy M.K. Cheung
Christy M.K. Cheung ([email protected]) is an associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. She received her Ph.D. from City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include social media, e-commerce, knowledge management, IT adoption and usage, and societal implications of information technology. She has published over one hundred refereed articles in international journals, conference proceedings, and research texts, including MIS Quarterly, Decision Support Systems, and Information & Management among others.
Manju Ahuja
Manju Ahuja ([email protected])is a professor and university scholar in the College of Business, at the University of Louisville. Her research focuses on issues related to impacts and use of IT, innovation related to IT, virtual communities and teams, effects of mobile technologies, as well as management of human resources in IT professions. Her publications have appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, and others. She is a senior editor of MIS Quarterly.
Christian Wagner
Christian Wagner ([email protected]) is the Chair Professor of Social Media in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in business administration from the University of British Columbia. He specializes in the development and study of creativity support, collective intelligence, knowledge management, and the use of computer games for learning. His work has been published in several top IS journals. He is also a software entrepreneur.