How Can Mechanics Stimulate Behaviour, Motivation, and Engagement Levels in Learning and Training Applications?

This pilot study examines whether a quiz-based, game-based cyber awareness application can improve consumers' knowledge, awareness, and behaviour regarding e-commerce fraud and online scams. The authors ran an inter-group experiment with 46 participants, assigning 16 to a traditional quiz control group and 30 to a quiz-style role-playing game treatment group, and evaluated outcomes using the risk behaviour diagnosis methodology. Interest in games, frequency of e-commerce use, and fear of victimisation emerged as the main motivators for the treatment group to improve their fraud-prevention awareness.

The game is built around a shopping-challenge narrative in which players earn credits by learning about fraud threats, use shield cards to protect their resources, and consult tutorial cards to reinforce learning. The design applies four balancing techniques: flow, meaningful choices, incentives, and task duration. Feedback from the 30 treatment-group participants was broadly positive: 90% reported learning anti-fraud tips, and 86.7% felt they had sufficient freedom to progress. However, only 33.3% rated the choices as meaningful, with a further 46.7% rating them as quite meaningful, and the overall fun rating was moderate at 3.6 out of 5. Threat and tutorial cards were judged most useful, while shield cards were rated least important, because players prioritised whatever helped them accumulate credits for their shopping lists.

The authors conclude that aligning in-game rewards with learning objectives sustains engagement, but that the incentive structure can make certain choices predictable and reduce the pull of protective content. Their recommendations include introducing rewards for first attempts or costs for viewing answers, and they plan a longitudinal study to balance meaningful choices against incentives. The work is explicitly preliminary, and the sample is small and drawn from a narrow age range of 18 to 54.