Gamification for Health and Wellbeing: A Systematic Review of the Literature

TY - JOUR

T1 - Gamification for Health and Wellbeing

T2 - A Systematic Review of the Literature

AU - Johnson, Daniel

AU - Deterding, Christoph Sebastian

AU - Kuhn, Kerri-Ann

AU - Staneva, Aleksandra

AU - Stoyanov, Stoyan

AU - Hides, Leanne

N1 - © 2016, Elsevier B.V. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy.

PY - 2016/11/2

Y1 - 2016/11/2

N2 - Background: Compared to traditional persuasive technology and health games, gamification is posited to offer several advantages for motivating behaviour change for health and well-being, and increasingly used. Yet little is known about its effectiveness.Aims: We aimed to assess the amount and quality of empirical support for the advantages and effectiveness of gamification applied to health and well-being.Methods: We identified seven potential advantages of gamification from existing research and conducted a systematic literature review of empirical studies on gamification for health and well-being, assessing quality of evidence, effect type, and application domain.Results: We identified 19 papers that report empirical evidence on the effect of gamification on health and well-being. 59% reported positive, 41% mixed effects, with mostly moderate or lower quality of evidence provided. Results were clear for health-related behaviors, but mixed for cognitive outcomes.Conclusions: The current state of evidence supports that gamification can have a positive impact in health and wellbeing, particularly for health behaviors. However several studies report mixed or neutral effect. Findings need to be interpreted with caution due to the relatively small number of studies and methodological limitations present in many studies (e.g., a lack of comparison of gamified interventions to non-gamified versions of the intervention).

AB - Background: Compared to traditional persuasive technology and health games, gamification is posited to offer several advantages for motivating behaviour change for health and well-being, and increasingly used. Yet little is known about its effectiveness.Aims: We aimed to assess the amount and quality of empirical support for the advantages and effectiveness of gamification applied to health and well-being.Methods: We identified seven potential advantages of gamification from existing research and conducted a systematic literature review of empirical studies on gamification for health and well-being, assessing quality of evidence, effect type, and application domain.Results: We identified 19 papers that report empirical evidence on the effect of gamification on health and well-being. 59% reported positive, 41% mixed effects, with mostly moderate or lower quality of evidence provided. Results were clear for health-related behaviors, but mixed for cognitive outcomes.Conclusions: The current state of evidence supports that gamification can have a positive impact in health and wellbeing, particularly for health behaviors. However several studies report mixed or neutral effect. Findings need to be interpreted with caution due to the relatively small number of studies and methodological limitations present in many studies (e.g., a lack of comparison of gamified interventions to non-gamified versions of the intervention).

KW - gamification

KW - health

KW - Wellbeing

KW - Systematic review

U2 - 10.1016/j.invent.2016.10.002

DO - 10.1016/j.invent.2016.10.002

M3 - Article

SN - 2214-7829

VL - 6

SP - 89

EP - 106

JO - Internet Interventions

JF - Internet Interventions

ER -