Ethical Judgment Toward Gamified Marketing Campaigns

There has been an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of motivational and playful design, commonly referred to as gamification in improving business performance and its alignment with ethical standards. While gamification strategies and approaches are widely recognized for enhancing consumer engagement, questions remain about how consumers perceive their ethicality, and it is particularly unclear whether and how certain design aspects influence consumers’ ethical judgments. This study addresses this gap by examining how two key design aspects, social dynamics (singleplayer vs. multiplayer (collaboration vs. competition)) and agency (yes/skill-based vs. no/luck-based), shape ethical judgment of gamified marketing campaigns by conducting an online experiment. A total of 871 participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions featuring a “Spin to Win” game, which provided monetary rewards (final N = 735). Given that individuals’ ethical ideologies influence how they interpret moral issues, idealism and relativism were investigated as key moderators. The findings reveal that ethical judgment was significantly influenced by social dynamics. Consumers rated the singleplayer design more favorably than the multiplayer conditions. Additionally, within multiplayer design, consumers perceive collaboration-based design as more ethical than competition-based design. Surprisingly, no significant differences emerged across agency levels. However, a significant interaction effect between agency and social dynamics was identified, involving levels of idealism and relativism. Grounded in empirical findings, this study addresses the gap in understanding the ethics of gamification within the marketing context and contributes to the literature by offering concrete practical recommendations for marketing managers aiming to enhance the ethicality of their gamified campaigns.