Improving Children’s Oral Hygiene Habits in Sri Lanka via Gamification

Abstract

The researchers seek to provide a Gamification model that will help children of Sri Lanka improve their oral hygiene habits, thereby acting as a change agent to influencing adults’ behaviors to have good oral hygiene habits. The nature of the study was a multi-method due to its complexity. The study took place within 13 weeks, where data was longitudinally collected from 50 families in a natural environment. Both descriptive statistics and quantitative methods were used to analyze the data. Our findings suggest that expedient designs need to consider all four clusters, namely System Design, Challenges, Rewards, and Social Influences, as interdependencies among these clusters enable and amplify the effectiveness of Gamification. Our findings should be of particular interest since they generally show vast potential to motivate children through Gamification. Organizations should not see Gamification as a ‘magic bullet’ for end-user motivation but as a means that must be carefully and deliberately integrated into the model to support a motivational culture that would prompt sustainable behavior.