Motivational aspects of using gamified mobile applications in cultural tourism
This paper is about motivational aspects and the role of gamification in using travel applications. The phenomenon of cultural tourism will be examined in a context of educational activities. An important role will be assigned to determine user’s motivation and how gamification may increase the interest of different groups of tourists.
With the growth of the Web it has become possible to find the information about any tourist attraction or monument just in a couple of minutes. Though in the most of museums or places of interest it is possible to get printed brochures with all important information about the place, the user may find a lot of “cultural heritage” applications on a mobile market. In the first part of the essay the definition of cultural tourism will be given and the motivation and behavioral aspects of cultural tourism will be discussed. In the second part the phenomenon of gamification will be discussed. In a…show more content… For example, we may take gamification that is announced to have “a tremendous potential in educational space” [2 Knewton.com]. Gamification is the idea of using game design elements in non-game contexts to motivate and increase user activity ]. Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham in their work “Gamification by Design” give the phenomenon of gamification a great importance in interaction process. They provide an example how “a little game” may help to solve a problem with eating broccoli, which is healthy but usually is rejected by kids because of the taste. According to the authors, the effective solution would be to combine fun (e.g., “the airplane landing”, used by generations of parents to make children eat) and reward (e.g. putting cheese sauce on broccoli or eating dessert