The Mediating Effect of Perceived Persuasiveness on the Relationship Between Gamified Reward in Ant Forest and User’s Sustainable Behaviour in China

Gamification is frequently used as a standard design module in creating mobile applications. Gamified rewards are the one of the most effective in gamification elements in influencing users’ sustainable behaviour. Ant Forest, a Chinese sustainable mobile application, encourages users to develop sustainable behaviours in exchange for virtual and real rewards. Consequently, this study investigates the perceived persuasiveness mediating effect in the relationship between gamified reward in Ant Forest and users’ sustainable behaviour in China. This study fills the gap by focusing on the influence of gamified reward and perceived persuasiveness on users’ sustainable behaviour with the Stimuli-Organism-Response Theory. This study applied a survey technique with 621 samples of Ant Forest users across China with stratified proportional sampling. The findings show that the gamified reward in Ant Forest positively and strongly influences the perceived persuasiveness on user. Simultaneously, perceived persuasiveness is a complementary partial mediating effect on the relationship between gamified reward and sustainable behaviour. These findings reasonably explain the mechanism of gamified reward and perceived persuasiveness. It also demonstrates the importance of increasing gamified rewards to improve the perceived persuasiveness of mobile applications and promote sustainable behaviours of users.