Abstract
In recent years, gamification has become a phenomenon of growing interests to both researchers and practitioners. Gamification is often viewed as a behavior nudging tool that can reduce the incentive gaps between doing good and doing well; and therefore engage people in a wide range of socially beneficial behaviors, such as adopting energy conservation practices. As part of the on-going effort to develop the next-generation freight data collection system, this thesis explores how gamification can incentivize survey participation under the new data collection system. Specifically, a Truck Driver Survey is being developed to collect the freight data in Singapore comprehensively for the first time. Since the data to be collected from truck drivers are fine-grained and require consistent input efforts, gamification is proposed as a solution to engage the survey participants. In addressing the problem of how gamification can improve the survey design, this thesis follows an experimental approach: first, the thesis reviews on what is gamification and the truck driver survey that is to be “gamified”, develops prototypes of the gamified design of the Truck Driver Survey that are ready for testing; second, seven subjects are interviewed to test those prototypes. On the data collected, this thesis examines truck drivers’ perception of gamification and how their stated preferences over different game elements influence their motivation to participate the survey. In general, the subjects interviewed prefer tangible rewards, such as cash and information-based reward that can help them in their work. For monetary-based rewards, all subjects interviewed indicated that they preferred cash than others, including lotteries with a higher expected payoff. For information-based rewards, subjects expressed interests in those that they perceived could bring tangible benefits indirectly. For example, some subjects who were novice drivers mentioned they would be motivated to participate in the survey for traffic information, which can improve their route planning and transport more cargo within a day. Those preferences exhibited by subjects interviewed are largely influenced by three factors: current salaries, wage structure and experiences level. On top of the reward type, the game dynamics that are used to distribute the rewards are also an important factor. Majority of subjects showed short-term impatience. If they need to wait too long to finally win the reward, they would probably quit the game. In terms of how to implement the “gamified” survey in an easily navigable way for users, it is important to ensure that the icons used in the survey can represent their respective functions clearly. For the survey prototypes tested, all subjects reported that navigation was not a problem since the meanings of the icons in prototypes were straightforward In summary, the proposed gamification designs in this thesis could make the survey experiences more fun and engaging to truck drivers through reducing the survey participation costs and increasing the rewards for participation. Rewards examined in this thesis are categorized into two types: tangible and non-tangible. While most drivers prefer tangible rewards, such as cash, there exist some driver who express interest in non-tangible (such as information-based) rewards.