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Persuasive gamified systems are effective tools for motivating behaviour change using various persuasive strategies. In line with the reinforcement theory, some persuasive gamified systems employ reward and punishment in their design to achieve the intended behavioural outcome. Research has argued both in favour and against using these strategies in behaviour change applications due to mixed results with respect to their effectiveness. However, there is a lack knowledge about how interventions using these strategies could motivate or demotivate behaviours. Therefore, this paper explores the mechanism through which Reward and Punishment motivate or demotivate behaviours with respect to their strengths and weaknesses. The results of large-scale exploratory studies (N = 1768) uncover important strengths and weaknesses that could facilitate or hinder the effectiveness of Reward and Punishment at motivating behaviour change. These include their ability to engage users and make behaviour fun, reinforce commitments to goals, and reveal some consequences of bad behaviour. We also compared the perceived effectiveness of reward and punishment quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular interest in online communities has grown rapidly in recent years as a result of the widespread diffusion of Web 2.0 applications. However, the full values and potential of online communities cannot be realised without users' ongoing participation. Thus, this study aims at developing and empirically testing a research model to examine users' continuance intention to participate in an online community based on an extended information systems (IS) continuance model. Specifically, entertainment value and affective commitment are included in the IS continuance model and empirically examined in the context of online communities. A total of 240 returns collected from an online survey, which was conducted among users of a website bulletin board-based community in China, were analysed using partial least squares. The results reveal that users' continuance intention to participate in an online community is determined by both satisfaction and affective commitment. Satisfaction and affective commitment are, in turn, influenced by positive disconfirmations of purposive and entertainment values. The findings of this study contribute not only to theory building in online community continuance but also inform online community moderators in their effort to develop strategies for retaining their users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]