Despite investigating digital gaming for commercial purposes, less scholarly attention exists on digital gaming for societal purposes such as sustainability (“serious games”). The current study investigates whether a serious game can enhance sustainability marketing outcomes, including knowledge, value‐in‐behavior, and behavioral intentions longitudinally (pre‐gameplay to post‐gameplay). Further, the study seeks to understand the influence of reward‐based and meaningful game mechanics on these sustainability marketing outcomes. We recruited 387 participants for a week‐long field study using a serious game which encourages household energy conservation. The findings show that the serious game significantly increased sustainability knowledge, value‐in‐behavior, and sustainable behavioral intention after one week. Reward‐based game mechanics (badges and trophies) significantly influenced sustainability knowledge and indirectly influenced value‐in‐behavior via sustainability knowledge, whereas reward‐based (points) and meaningful (educational messages) game mechanics had little impact. The results empirically support the conceptual model theorization—underpinned by a “do–learn–feel” behavioral learning approach—which possessed superior fit to a “do–feel–learn” rival model. This study provides novel insights regarding eliciting value‐in‐behavior longitudinally within serious games. Our multidimensional approach to assessing reward‐based game mechanics extends prior studies and suggests that higher‐tier rewards are more influential than lower‐tiered rewards to achieve sustainability marketing outcomes. We further demonstrate that reward‐based game mechanics outperform meaningful game mechanics at influencing desired outcomes, challenging existing gaming literature.

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基于奖励或有意义的游戏？游戏机制和可持续发展的严肃游戏的实地研究

尽管出于商业目的对数字游戏进行了调查，但对于诸如可持续性（“严重游戏”）之类的社会目的，数字游戏却鲜有学术关注。本研究调查一个严肃的游戏是否可以纵向提高可持续性营销成果，包括知识，行为价值和行为意图（游戏前到游戏后）。此外，该研究旨在了解基于奖励的有意义的游戏机制对这些可持续性营销成果的影响。我们使用严肃的游戏鼓励家庭节能，招募了387名参与者进行为期一周的野外研究。研究结果表明，严肃的游戏在一周后显着增加了可持续发展知识，行为价值和可持续行为意向。基于奖励的游戏机制（徽章和奖杯）极大地影响了可持续性知识，并通过可持续性知识间接影响了行为价值，而基于奖励的（积分）和有意义的（教育性信息）游戏机制影响很小。结果从经验上支持概念模型理论化，该理论模型以“做-学-感”行为学习方法为基础，该方法与“做-学-学”竞争模型具有很好的契合性。这项研究提供了有关在严肃游戏中纵向引发行为价值的新颖见解。我们用于评估基于奖励的游戏机制的多维方法扩展了先前的研究，并表明，较高级别的奖励比较低级别的奖励更有影响力，以实现可持续性营销成果。