Huseyin Cavusoglu
ABSTRACT
Online communities heavily rely on voluntary participation and continued engagement from users because these sites can flourish only if there are meaningful contributions from community members. Gamifying the underlying incentive mechanism can be a solution to elicit and sustain the desired user behavior. In this paper, we develop a theory of gamification and study the impact of a hierarchical badges system, a reward mechanism based on gamification principles, on user participation and engagement at Stack Overflow Q&A site. Specifically, we assess the extent to which users are incentivized by earned badges in their contributions to the answering activity. Our initial results present strong empirical evidence that confirms the value of the badges and the effectiveness of gamification in stimulating voluntary participation.
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Index Terms
- Can Gamification Motivate Voluntary Contributions?: The Case of StackOverflow Q&A Community
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