The Impact of Persuasive Framing on the Perceived Effectiveness of a Game for Behaviour Change

Abstract

Persuasive games have emerged as effective tools for behaviour change across diverse life domains, engaging and motivating players towards positive behaviours. An essential factor that may influence the effectiveness of persuasive games is their framing, which refers to the strategic design and presentation of the game’s context, mechanics, and objectives. This paper investigates the role of game framing in enhancing the perceived effectiveness of persuasive games or not, using the context of a healthy eating game with three different game framing versions (gain-framing, loss-framing and gain-loss framing). In a study of 371 participants, our results show that while all the framing types were effective at promoting behaviour change, gain-framing was perceived as significantly less effective when compared to loss-framing and gain-loss framing. We also explore potential differences in the perceived effectiveness of four persuasive strategies (reward, competition, praise, and suggestion) implementations across the three framing types. We concluded by exploring the reasons behind these results and their implications for designing persuasive games for various framing types.

Keywords:

• Gain-framing
• loss-framing
• gain-loss framing
• persuasive games
• behaviour change
• persuasive strategies
• serious games

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program. We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through the Discovery Grant. Canada Excellence Research Chairs, Government of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Chinenye Ndulue

Chinenye Ndulue is a researcher and PhD Candidate at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. His research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, Persuasive System Design, Persuasive Games, and UX/UI design. He applies his research to understanding how user characteristics (such as culture, motivation and personality) impact the effectiveness of persuasive systems and games.

Rita Orji

Rita Orji is a Canada Research Chair in Persuasive Technology and a Computer Science Professor at Dalhousie University. She directs the Persuasive Computing Lab. Her research at the intersection of technology and human behavior focuses on user-centered approaches to designing technologies to improve lives and support people to achieve various self-improvement goals.