Although gamification has received considerable attention from both researchers and practitioners, its influence on consumers remains ambiguous. This paper proposes that a negative process through decreased attention and a positive process through increased enjoyment explain the effects of gamification on different outcome variables. Study 1 examines these two processes and gamification’s downstream consequences on purchase intention and product information recognition. For purchase intention, the two processes operate in parallel and produce a null effect of gamification. For product information recognition, only the negative process emerges, resulting in a negative effect of gamification. Studies 2 and 3 focus on the negative effect of gamification on product information recognition and show that the negative effect disappears in gamification designs that link the game elements with meaningful information about the product (Study 2) or make consumers aware of the distraction potential of game elements (Study 3). The studies’ findings provide managerial insights into why not all gamification endeavors yield the desired results; they also specify two boundary conditions (i.e., meaningfulness and disclosure) that may help managers avoid potentially detrimental effects of gamification.

尽管游戏化受到了研究人员和从业者的极大关注，但它对消费者的影响仍然不明确。本文提出，通过减少注意力的消极过程和通过增加乐趣的积极过程解释了游戏化对不同结果变量的影响。研究 1 检查这两个过程和游戏化的对购买意愿和产品信息识别的下游影响。对于购买意愿，这两个过程并行运行并产生游戏化的无效效果。对于产品信息识别，只会出现负面过程，从而产生游戏化的负面效果。研究 2 和 3 侧重于游戏化对产品信息识别的负面影响，表明在将游戏元素与有意义的产品信息联系起来的游戏化设计中，负面影响消失了（研究 2），或者让消费者意识到游戏的分心潜力元素（研究 3）。这些研究的结果提供了管理见解，说明为什么并非所有的游戏化努力都能产生预期的结果；他们还指定了两个边界条件（即