Exploring Monetization Options for a Digital Platform offering a Gamified Solution on Climate-Wise Housing

Abstract

Climate change is one of the major concerns in the present era and gamified digital platforms are considered as a promising approach to increase engagement and adoption of sustainable measures among citizens. This study is based on a gamified digital platform that offers climate-wise housing solutions and explores effective monetization strategies for a gamified digital platform and how different monetization strategies affect user willingness to pay and their engagement towards a monetized gamified platform that offers climate-wise housing solutions.

This study was carried out in Helsinki and Vaasa in Finland and among homeowners of detached houses who make their own decisions about home maintenance and energy consumption. This study followed a purposive sampling approach for data collection and in total 12 homeowners were approached and interviewed through semi-structured interviews. Through abductive thematic analysis and with the help of the Technology Acceptance Model and Innovation Diffusion Theory, this study explores users’ willingness to pay and their engagement towards the monetized version of a gamified digital platform that offers climate-wise housing solutions. Themes were developed by using NVivo 15 and by considering factors such as risk, value, ease, usefulness, intention to use, relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.

The findings of this study suggest that value for money and usefulness of the platform is a central part of acceptance of monetization strategies and users are willing to pay for the digital platform when it provides enough value. Moreover, users require clear prices and show concerns about data sharing. The results also showed environmental and social alignments of the monetized version of the platform. Furthermore, participants are interested in freemium, monthly subscriptions, advertising, and strongly reject Pay-Per-Use model. Participants also accepted and focused highly on free trials and peer influence. The study concludes that effective monetization strategies in sustainability-oriented platforms need transparent and clear approaches for user engagement and their willingness to pay. The study has practical implications for developers and providers of monetized sustainability platforms. It proposes that monetization should be based on provable value that paid content should deliver valuable information in contrast to free versions. Moreover, the study is also a beneficial addition to the literature of gamification and monetization of digital platforms.