ABSTRACT Rooted in theories of competitiveness and social comparison, we model the effects of users’ structural and trait competitiveness on their engagement and performance growth in an informal learning environment. We hypothesise that game elements of points and leaderboards stimulate users’ structural competitiveness, which affects users’ engagement and has an inverted-U effect on performance growth. We further hypothesise that these effects are stronger among individuals with higher trait competitiveness. We tested our hypotheses using data from a natural experiment conducted over 300 days on 88,310 unique users who made 215,920 game interactions within the Cyber Detectives exhibit at the Tech Interactive museum in California. Our results are based on two objective measures of trait-competitiveness as both behaviour and outcome (percentile ranking on total time spent and number of badges earned, respectively), multiple objective measures of user engagement (time spent per attempt, number of reattempts, and daily user attempts), and an objective measure of performance growth (points). Results provide overall support to our hypotheses. We contribute to the gamification literature by providing strong causal evidence of points and leaderboards triggering structural and trait competitiveness, which interact to affect both engagement and performance growth in informal learning contexts.

中文翻译：

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积分和排行榜刺激的结构和特质竞争力对用户参与度和绩效增长的影响：在非正式学习环境中进行游戏化的自然实验

摘要 基于竞争力和社会比较理论，我们模拟了用户的结构性和特质竞争力对其在非正式学习环境中的参与度和绩效增长的影响。我们假设积分和排行榜的游戏元素会刺激用户的结构性竞争力，从而影响用户的参与度并对性能增长具有倒U 型效应。我们进一步假设这些影响在具有更高特质竞争力的个体中更强。我们使用来自于 88,310 名独立用户进行的自然实验的数据来测试我们的假设，这些用户在加州科技互动博物馆的 Cyber​​ Detectives 展览中进行了 215,920 次游戏互动。我们的结果基于特征竞争力的两个客观衡量标准，即行为和结果（分别在总时间和获得的徽章数量上的百分比排名）、用户参与度的多个客观衡量标准（每次尝试花费的时间、重试次数和每日用户尝试次数），以及性能增长的客观衡量标准（点数）。结果为我们的假设提供了整体支持。我们通过提供触发结构性和特质竞争力的积分和排行榜的强有力的因果证据来为游戏化文献做出贡献，这些证据相互作用以影响非正式学习环境中的参与度和绩效增长。和绩效增长的客观衡量标准（点数）。结果为我们的假设提供了整体支持。我们通过提供触发结构性和特质竞争力的积分和排行榜的强有力的因果证据来为游戏化文献做出贡献，这些证据相互作用以影响非正式学习环境中的参与度和绩效增长。和绩效增长的客观衡量标准（点数）。结果为我们的假设提供了整体支持。我们通过提供触发结构性和特质竞争力的积分和排行榜的强有力的因果证据来为游戏化文献做出贡献，这些证据相互作用以影响非正式学习环境中的参与度和绩效增长。