Gamification: Gamified Elements’ Impact on Online Trust

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of gamification on online trust, testing the impact through the use of an e-commerce website, Ebay. The objective of the paper is to discover how a certain type of visual design element implemented on websites impacts users’ extent of online trust. Specifically, this thesis focuses on the use of gamified elements as a website design tool to increase users’ trust in a website, which is analyzed by being broken down into different constructs and dimensions. The empirical part of this study was conducted through survey research and the data were collected through a structured question survey, which was distributed through several different channels to obtain an optimal number of participants. For the analysis, an online trust model was used, that was created based on a trust model designed by other researchers. On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that the use of gamified elements does have an impact on online trust, in fact, it positively affects it in several ways, according to several dimensions. Therefore, this study indicates that gamified elements implemented on websites have the potential to enhance users’ confidence in an online seller.