The Effect of Gamification on Psychological and Behavioral Outcomes: Implications for Cruise Tourism Destinations

Byeong Cheol Lee
Additional contact information
Byeong Cheol Lee: Department of Tourism and Event Management, Kyonggi University, Seoul 03746, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effect of gamification on tourist psychological outcome and knowledge gain in the context of cultural heritage sites, which are popular cruise tourism destinations. A comprehensive literature review revealed the critical role of gamification in facilitating psychological (enjoyment, flow experience, and loyalty) and behavioral outcomes (knowledge gain) at cultural heritage sites. Using a field experiment, this study employed a gamified app as a manipulation. A total of 342 gamified app users (n = 165) or non-users (n = 177) were selected by stratified random sampling method from among college students majoring in tourism and cruise management in South Korea. After screening the data, a Hayes’ PROCESS modeling technique was mainly utilized to test the proposed hypotheses based on 331 cases. The results showed that gamification had a strong influence on knowledge gain about cultural heritage attractions. On the other hand, gamification had negative effects on enjoyment and flow experience. More importantly, gamification had a negative indirect effect on loyalty toward cultural heritage attractions. These findings imply the usefulness of gamified apps to convey memorable and real-time information and knowledge to users in cultural heritage sites.

Keywords: gamification; flow; enjoyment; knowledge gain; cruise tourism; cultural heritage site (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3002/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3002/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3002-:d:234881

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().