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Top1. Introduction
Online markets have become increasingly competitive as a result of the growth of various social media platforms and mobile applications, and many businesses are failing to engage users (Suh, Wagner, & Liu, 2018). A rising number of online applications and businesses are vying for the attention of a user population that is shrinking at a far slower rate, intensifying the rivalry for user attention. ‘Gamification’ has been embraced as a tactic for influencing and inspiring people to participate in education, training, marketing, networking, and health-related activities as a relatively new paradigm for engaging people (Suh et al., 2018). The Internet has become an inextricable part of modern life, with the average adult spending 20 hours per week online (Looyestyn et al., 2017). Consumers benefit from online products and programs because they provide easy access to services (Harwood & Garry, 2015; Looyestyn et al., 2017). Online programs, on the other hand, can only be effective if users are engaged in the short and/or long term (Looyestyn et al., 2017). Online engagement encompasses a wide range of topics, with different meanings depending on the context and desired outcomes. Some online programs are just intended to keep users engaged for a single session (Looyestyn et al., 2017). On the other hand, the quality of user involvement rather than the length of time is important. This is especially true in market research studies where researchers want to improve the quality of online survey responses or educational studies where researchers want to improve academic achievement in online courses (Lukas, Eskofier, & Berking, 2021). In this sense, gamification refers to the use of game aspects such as design strategies, thinking, and mechanics to enrich non-game environments to engage users by improving the hedonic value of an existing information system (IS) (Delello, Hawley, McWhorter, Gipson, & SDeal, 2018; Nivedhitha & Manzoor, 2020; Stiglbauer, Weber, & Batinic, 2019).
Individuals are more likely to stay involved in an activity if they find it entertaining and/or valuable, according to research (Harwood & Garry, 2015; Looyestyn et al., 2017; Lukas et al., 2021; Behl et al., 2021a). Gamification has been associated with higher levels of enjoyment and engagement. Gamification is a term that first appeared in the domain of computer games in 2002 and became more commonly known around 2010 (Harwood & Garry, 2015; Looyestyn et al., 2017; Lukas et al., 2021). Since then, gamification has become more widely discussed in academic journals, however, with diverse meanings. Gamification is used in a variety of fields, including education (Parra-González, López-Belmonte, Segura-Robles, & Moreno-Guerrero, 2021), personalized health care (Martinho, Carneiro, Corchado, & Marreiros, 2020), retailing (Leclercq, Poncin, & Hammedi, 2017)), employee engagement and well-being (Hammedi, Leclercq, Poncin, & Alkire, 2021), banking (Chauhan, Akhtar, & Gupta, 2021; Nasirzadeh & Fathian, 2020), and tourism (Nivedhitha & Manzoor, 2020; Xu, Buhalis, & Weber, 2017).