Reinforcing the Attitude-Behavior Relationship in Persuasive Game Design
Four Design Recommendations for Persuasive Games for Societal Interventions
A.E. Erdbrink (TU Delft - Policy Analysis)
R. Kortmann (TU Delft - Policy Analysis)
A Verbraeck (TU Delft - Policy Analysis)
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Abstract
Persuasive games for societal interventions aim to shape, reinforce
or change players’ attitudes and behavior to help solving complex societal
issues. In earlier work, we explored how persuasive game mechanics may
contribute to the formation of attitudes in persuasive games. As a follow-up, this paper presents four design recommendations that could increase the chance that these attitudes will actually lead to the desired behavior shown by players after the game: viz., these attitudes require the right conditions to become a predictor of the desired, post-game behavior.
In order to arrive at these recommendations we looked at relevant work from the field of social psychology. Next we linked our insights to the context of persuasive game design. This yielded four conceptual design recommendations for maximizing the likelihood for an attitude influenced by a persuasive game to result in the desired behavior in the real world;
1. aligning the degree of specification of a game’s message and the desired behavior
2. emphasizing the function of the attitude to be influenced
3. enabling players to reflect on their internal states
4. emphasizing personal relevance of an attitude to a behavioral choice
So far, these recommendations are still theoretical in nature. We therefore discuss how future work should empirically examine these, including their implications for the effective use of persuasive game mechanics.