Unveiling factors of gamification platforms for tourism marketing: exploring its impact on tourist inspiration and sustainable tourist engagement

Purpose Using the concepts of game design principles such as badges, leaderboards, points and rewards, gamification platforms for tourism marketing make tourists have more fun, which inspires their behavioural changes towards sustainable engagement. Despite the growing interest in gamification in tourism marketing, literature lacks a theoretically grounded and empirically validated framework that unveils the factors of gamification platforms for tourism marketing to explore its impact on tourist inspiration (TI) and sustainable tourist engagement (STE). To address this gap, the study draws on the technology acceptance model (TAM) to conceptualise and validate a structural model to explain the relational dynamics between factors of gamification platforms and STE. Design/methodology/approach Primary data were collected from 305 domestic and international tourists in India using a two-wave time-lagged survey. Quantitative methodology was employed to analyse the hypothesised relationships. Findings Findings reveal that factors of gamification platforms for tourism marketing include their usefulness, ease of use, trust, security, effectiveness and enjoyment. Such factors positively influence TI, and subsequently, TI positively influences STE. Practical implications The findings imply that gamification platforms for TI can offer tourism marketing managers the opportunity to increase motivation, enable behavioural change, enable analysis and enable learning. Originality/value This study contributes to tourism technology literature by offering a novel theory-driven framework that explicates the mechanism through which key factors of gamification platforms for tourism marketing can promote STE.