Eco-Gamification in Ant Forest: How Gamification Affordances Activate Egoistic and Altruistic Motivations Across Travel Stages

Abstract

This study examines how app-based eco-gamification promotes environmentally friendly tourism behaviors across pre-trip, on-trip and post-trip stages. Using Ant Forest as the context, we adopted a sequential mixed-methods design. Interviews identified five gamification affordances: reward, cognition, competence, autonomy and social interaction. A two-wave survey of travelers showed that reward and cognition affordances strengthened altruistic motivations, whereas competence, autonomy and social affordances strengthened egoistic motivations. Both motivations positively predicted environmentally friendly tourism behaviors. Follow-up interviews further revealed a social utility–personal enjoyment resonance mechanism through which the two motivational pathways persist and reinforce each other across travel stages. By moving beyond single touchpoints, this study explains how eco-gamification supports sustained green behavior across the tourist journey and offers an affordance-based account of motivational dynamics in real-world human-computer interaction. The findings also inform the design of app-based sustainability interventions in tourism.