Linking Theories of Motivation, Game Mechanics, and Public Deliberation to Design an Online System for Participatory Budgeting
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719890815 |
| Author | Michael Broghammer,John Gastil |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719890815
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(1) 7 –25
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321719890815
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Linking Theories of
Motivation, Game Mechanics,
and Public Deliberation to
Design an Online System for
Participatory Budgeting
John Gastil and Michael Broghammer
Abstract
Existing systems for online civic engagement and public consultation need a better architecture
if they are to realize the aspirations of deliberative democracy. To improve the design of such
systems, we develop an empirical model of online civic engagement that connects common game
mechanics to four key democratic processes and outcomes—inclusion, deliberative engagement,
sound and influential public input, and long-term civic impacts. We then link game mechanics and
deliberation with theories of motivation to show how these mechanics can leverage people’s
drives to fulfill basic needs, forge social connections, and gain status. To illustrate our model
in more concrete terms, we show how game mechanics could motivate both participants and
policymakers in an online participatory budgeting system. We conclude by describing a multi-stage
experimental approach to testing this model within an existing system of online participatory
budgeting.
Keywords
civic engagement, deliberative democracy, game design, motivation, participatory budgeting
Accepted: 13 September 2019
Society’s basic communication infrastructure has been transformed thanks to the wide-
spread adoption of advanced digital technology, the proliferation of information sources,
and the expansion of social media (Howard, 2015; Sunstein, 2017). Our digital age is
both promising and problematic for public deliberation (Nilsson and Carlsson, 2014).
New technology has broadened the public sphere to include more voices often in their
own enclaves (Simone, 2010), but the net effect of this “accelerated pluralism” may be a
Department of Communication Arts and Sciences and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, State
College, PA, USA
Corresponding author:
John Gastil, Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, 234 Sparks
Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Email: jgastil@psu.edu
890815PSX0010.1177/0032321719890815Political StudiesGastil and Broghammer
research-article2019
Special Issue Article
8 Political Studies 69(1)
more volatile public discourse (Bimber, 1998). Political campaign outreach has become
more expansive and intensive which can inspire public participation (Green and Gerber,
2008), but finely targeted messaging can be manipulative by serving purposes invisible to
the voters being contacted (Persily, 2017). Governance has become more visible by post-
ing data, records, and meetings online, but the net benefit of these practices remains
uncertain at best (Piotrowski, 2017; Porumbescu, 2017).
Particularly contentious is the decades-long debate over the effectiveness and utility of
online versus offline attempts at public deliberation (e.g. Baek et al., 2012; Gastil, 2000;
Min, 2007; Stromer-Galley, 2002). Many articles in this Special Issue advance this same
debate by assessing the threats and opportunities that digital media pose for public delib-
eration. When viewed in the broader framework of deliberative systems (Parkinson and
Mansbridge, 2012), however, the deliberative potential of online systems depends on how
they may fit into a larger institutional context (Ercan et al., 2018; Lyons, 2017). The effi-
cacy of any digital deliberative system depends on how it is designed.
Thus, one challenge for scholars of politics is to theorize and envision online systems
that could better serve democratic purposes. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and myriad
other “civic media” (Gordon and Mihailidis, 2016) constitute an ever more important part
of public life (Howard, 2015; Wells, 2015), yet research on such interfaces has only begun
to explore how such interfaces might be harnessed for more deliberative purposes (Davies
and Chandler, 2012; Manosevitch, 2014). Discovering what public discourse is possible
in such spaces requires varying their core design features systematically and testing them
under conditions with real political stakes.
To address that need, we propose a new model of digital deliberative civic engagement
that draws on key elements of game design—a process sometimes called “gamification”
(Chou, 2015). In the broadest sense, to “gamify” something means the application of
techniques, tools, and lessons from games. The result is not necessarily a full-fledged
game but something that resembles or evokes games in certain respects. Gamification of
an online discussion system, for example, might involve the addition of points for com-
ments that get “liked” or “up-voted” by others, with a leaderboard showing whose contri-
butions have earned the most.
Not every effort to gamify politics and civic engagement works well, and the problems
documented thus far include oversimplification of issues, limiting users’ autonomy, and
demographic differences in participation rates (Meloni et al., 2018; Spada et al., 2016).
Even so, past research has found that game mechanics can motivate lay citizens to partici-
pate, deliberate, and engage constructively with public institutions while simultaneously
motivating agencies and policymakers to be more responsive to public input (Gordon et al.,
2017; Hassan and Hamari, 2019; Lerner, 2014; Mayer, 2009; Thiel et al., 2016; Tolmie
et al., 2014). Even so, this literature remains under-theorized (Hassan, 2017; Morschheuser
et al., 2017). Specific game elements are not clearly connected to specific outcomes, and
studies have not clarified the mediating mechanisms through which these game elements
operate (Boyle et al., 2016; Giessen, 2015; Thiel et al., 2016). Thus, we hope to propose a
plausible means for improving online deliberative spaces while simultaneously advancing
theories of game design and motivation linked to deliberative engagement.
Our argument unfolds in four stages. First, we outline participatory budgeting (PB) as
a fruitful research context for developing, elucidating, and testing a model of how digital
tools can motivate deliberative public engagement. Second, we explore the conceptual
connections among game design, democracy, and online engagement, and we show the
relevance of such theoretical links to PB programs. Third, we advance a motivational
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