How Does Gamification Drive Individual Low-Carbon Behavior? —Based on a Questionnaire Study of Ant Forest Users

随着游戏化应用的日益发展，游戏化元素的设计如何影响消费者低碳行为的研究愈加受到营销学者的关注。绿色环保App使用率的提升，成为推动线上环保活动和绿色生活方式的有力工具。已有研究表明游戏化元素的加入对居民低碳行为有助推作用，但并没有深入理解游戏化设计如何激发游戏化示能性并进而影响低碳行为的内在机制。为了填补这一空白，该研究以国内最具影响力的在线环保应用“蚂蚁森林”为例，通过扩展游戏化示能性理论和目标框架理论，探索消费者低碳行为的驱动因素。结果表明，游戏示能性是蚂蚁森林用户践行低碳行为的重要心理来源。本研究为电商平台如何进行游戏化设计更好激发游戏化示能性对低碳行为的驱动作用提供参考。With the increasing development of gamification applications, the research on how the design of gamification elements affects consumers’ low-carbon behaviors has attracted more and more attention from marketing scholars. The increase in the use of green apps has become a powerful tool to promote online environmental protection activities and green lifestyles. Previous studies have shown that the addition of gamification elements can promote residents’ low-carbon behavior, but there is no deep understanding of how gamification design stimulates gamification and then affects the internal mechanism of low-carbon behavior. In order to fill this gap, this study takes Ant Forest, the most influential online environmental protection application in China, as an example, and explores the driving factors of consumers’ low-carbon behavior by extending the gamification energy demonstration theory and the target framework theory. The results show that game energy performance is an important psychological source for Ant Forest users to practice low-carbon behavior. This study provides a reference for how e-commerce platforms can better stimulate the driving effect of gamification on low-carbon behaviors by gamification design.