A personalized gamification method for increasing user engagement in social networks

Abstract

Reward-based gamification which increases user engagement in social networks is known as an extrinsic motivation to the users for a short term. Having said that, in every social network, there are different types of users with different interests and based on several researches, different users are interested in different game elements. In this paper, we aim to personalize reward-based gamification based on the users’ interests. In this way, by utilizing intrinsic motivation of users, their engagement with social networks will increase in the long run. To this end, SNPG method which implements fuzzy like concept on game elements has been proposed. On top of that, a two-round experiment on user engagement with a social network using the proposed method has been conducted. Results have shown that personalizing gamification using the proposed method in the long run increases the spending time of the users in a social network by 63.34% and their page views by 141.9% in comparison with the regular gamification. Furthermore, gender differences in using game elements have been studied, and results have shown that men are 5% more interested in personalized gamification than women and leaderboard is the most popular game element among men and women.