Abstract
We empirically investigate the impact of successful goal achievement on future effort to attain the next goal in a recurring goal framework. We use data from a popular German Question & Answer commu-nity where goals are represented in the form of badges. In particular, our analysis of this data hinges on the fact, that in this Question & Answer community, badges in a hierarchical badge system are in-creasingly challenging to attain up to a certain badge. After this certain badge, the difficulty level sud-denly drops and remains constant throughout up to the last badge in the hierarchy. Our findings indicate that after successful badge achievement users increase their subsequent effort to attain the next badge, but only as long as badges represent a challenge to the user. According to our analysis, we identify self-learning to be the key driver of this behavior.
Recommended Citation
von Rechenberg, Tobias and Gutt, Dominik, "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! - THE IMPACT OF GOAL ACHIEVEMENT ON SUBSEQUENT USER EFFORT AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF A GOAL’S DIFFICULTY" (2016). Research Papers. 115.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2016_rp/115