Play It to Plan It? The Impact of Game Elements on Usage of a Urban Planning App

Public participation experts and scholars alike are experimenting with gamification in their quest to motivate citizens to participate in urban planning. This chapter investigates the impact specific game elements can have on citizens´ Motivation in a mobile participation application. We present findings from a long-term field study with a gamified mobile participation prototype where we explored articipants´ awareness, acceptance, and experiences of using gaming elements in the application. Our results indicate that the effects of gamified participation are limited as it seems to only be an effective strategy to increase participation for those who are affine to games. For others, the majority who is usually already intrinsically motivated, gamification has little to offer. Yet, when gaming elements offer added value to their engagement, our participants approved of these elements. This work contributes to both gamification as well as to the burgeoning field of mobile participation in urban planning by providing insights about the effect of specific game elements and recommendations for the use of gamification in urban planning applications.