The first issue is motivation,
and it goes to the element of relatedness under self-determination theory.
As I talked about, relatedness is one of the three components of intrinsic,
internal, self-directed,
inherent motivation under self-determination theory.
And it's the one that has to do with being part of something bigger than yourself.
That might be interacting with friends, or
it might be the activity having some greater meaning or purpose.
When we're talking about social good applications,
that's there almost by definition.
That's what distinguishes these kinds of situations from other ones.
There is something involved that is bigger than the individual there's some,
larger social good or some larger life well-being good involved in the activity.
But it's not always simple to unlock the power of that sense of relatedness.
There's always things that we think we should do, or think would be good for
us, or think would be noble and worthy for us to do, and yet we just don't do them.
So gamification in social good context is really primarily about
activating that sense of relatedness, making it meaningful and real so
that people act on their latent desire to engage in some kinds of activities.
Second one is that there's a caveat there, which is that to the extent gamification
is about rewards, people might question, well, is there something troubling
in saying instead of just motivating you because you think this is good.
You're engaged in this activity because you believe in protecting wildlife, or
you're concerned about climate change, or
you want to learn something that is beneficial to you.
Instead of just doing that for the purely intrinsic reason,
maybe there's a danger that gamification puts a premium on doing it for
the short-term reward, for the points, for the badges, for the achievements.
Or maybe even for some prize type award,
some tangible reward that goes along with them.
And that potentially is problematic because it ties into that crowding out or
over justification effect that we saw in the discussion of intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation.
To the extent that gamification for social good is about game elements and
their rewards replacing, or substituting for, the inherent
relatedness-based intrinsic motivation of the activity, that could be a bad thing.
That could actually lead to less beneficial activity.
For example, as I described in the study of day care centers, where giving people
a penalty, charging them for coming late, actually made them come late even more.
So that's something to keep in mind and to avoid in these contexts.
The next one is that most, but not all, of the examples
that involve gamification for social good have some element of behavior change.
So they are about that third broad category of gamification, which I haven't
talked about as much in the course, that's about getting people over the hump.
Doing something that they already want to do.
Changing the way that they act in a certain area.
As opposed to an organization trying to motivate either its external communities,
i.e., customers, or its internal employees and extended networks.
So therefore, part of this unit will be focusing on behavior change and
habit formation as a distinct kind of practice.