Drivers of Competitive Behavior in Persuasive Technology in Education

Competition has been identified as an intrinsic motivation that could lead to successful outcomes in education. However, in Persuasive Technology in Education (PTE) research, there are limited studies showing its possible predictors. To advance research in this area, we conducted an empirical study among university students (N = 243) to uncover how extrinsic factors and social influence, which are external to learners, influence students' susceptibility to Competition. Specifically, we investigated how Social Learning, Social Comparison, and Reward, which are widely applied in persuasive technologies (PTs), influence Competition. Our results show that Social Comparison and Reward have significant influence on Competition, with Social Comparison (beta = 0.52, p < 0.001) having a stronger influence than Reward (beta = 0.29, p < 0.001). However, Social Learning (beta = -0.07, p = n.s) has no significant effect on Competition. Our model accounts for about 41% of the variance of Competition. Moreover, our multigroup analysis reveals that there are no significant differences between males and females, indicating that our findings generalize across gender. These findings suggest that Social Comparison, Reward, and Competition are compatible strategies, which can be implemented together in a persuasive system for education. We discuss the implications of our findings.