A Gamified System for Influencing Healthy E-commerce Shopping Habits

Abstract

Obesity is a serious health problem that has been linked to the major cause of death worldwide, ischemic heart disease. There is a lot of research on influencing people to live healthier lives by being active and eating healthy foods. However, there is little research on influencing people to buy healthier foods at the point of sale especially online. Because people tend to cook and eat what they buy, making healthier choices when grocery shopping online could lead to healthier eating habits for consumers. To advance research in this area, we propose a framework that uses gamification elements to influence consumers to purchase healthier foods in e-commerce. In this position paper, we present our proposed framework and describe the implementation of some of the influence strategies and game design elements such as rewards, personalization, suggestion, self-monitoring and feedback. This paper contributes to the area of game design by describing possible guidelines that could lead to healthier food shopping habits for e-commerce consumers.