A mathematical principle for the gamification of behavior change (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Many people want to build good habits to become healthier, live longer, or become happier but struggle to change their behavior. Gamification can make behavior change easier by awarding points for the desired behavior and deducting points for its omission. OBJECTIVE Here, we introduce a principled mathematical method for determining how many points should be awarded/deducted for the enactment/omission of the desired behavior depending on when and how often the person has succeeded versus failed to enact it in the past. We call this approach optimal gamification of behavior change. METHODS As a proof of concept, we design a chatbot that applies our optimal gamification method to help people build a healthy water drinking habit. We evaluated the effectiveness of this gamified intervention in a 40-day long field experiment with two control groups that used the same chatbot without points and without feedback and reminders, respectively. RESULTS We found that, during the intervention, users who received feedback based on optimal gamification enacted the desired behavior more often than the active control group or the passive control group. After the intervention the experimental group enacted the desired behavior just as often as the two control groups. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that optimal gamification can be used to make digital behavior change interventions more effective.