ERMeCC Lunch Seminar

The Persuasive Roles of Digital Games: A Theoretical Model 
Teresa de la Hera

The persuasive potential of digital games has been applied to influence the attitude and/or behavior of players in several fields such as marketing, pro-social communication or healthcare. However, a literature review of the different academic definitions used for the concept of persuasive games shows that there is no consensus in the way researchers define persuasive games, or at least, that they are studying persuasive games from different approaches and with different applications in mind. The differences in the way persuasive games are defined and studied are the result of the wide range of possible applications of this practice, but also due to the complexity of the process of persuasion itself and how the specificities of digital games have an influence in this process. In this paper I present a theoretical model designed to explain the different ways digital games can be used for persuasion, this is, to influence the attitude or behavior of players. This model is based on the conceptual framework of behavior scientist B.J. Fog and serves to better understand how digital games can play different roles in the process of persuasion (i.e (1) as media, (2) as tools, and (3) as social actors for persuasion), taking into consideration the persuasive goal of the game and the level of involvement of the player.

Organizational features as antecedents of employee ambassadorship on social media
Anne-Marie van Prooijen

Employees who represent their organization by sharing positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on social network sites (SNS) can enhance the organization’s image. It is therefore important to determine what drives employees to these actions, but little is known about how organizational features contribute to eWOM about the organization. The aim of the present research was to investigate whether organizational morality was a better predictor of eWOM intentions compared to organizational competence on both employees’ personal and professional SNS. It was also investigated whether the effect of morality on eWOM intentions was mediated by intrinsic or extrinsic motives. When organizational features were experimentally manipulated (Study 1, N = 142), measured within the same company (Study 2, N = 259) or measured in a more general working sample (Study 3, N = 261), results consistently showed the primacy of organizational morality in determining eWOM intentions on SNS. Additionally, results showed that organizational identification mediated the effect of morality on eWOM, suggesting that intrinsic motives are most likely to underlie employees’ preference for representing their moral organization on SNS.