Warm-Up Your Audience Before Dancing With Them: Applying Persuasive Game Design to Enhance Audience Participation During a Dance Performance

Audiences of dance performances often want to participate, but when given the possibility to do so may feel restrained. Persuasive Game Design methods were used to enhance audience participation by providing the audience with a gamified warm-up. The warm-up was designed to resolve the inhibiting factors for audience participation (e.g., social inhibition, cognitive, and physical preparedness) by using game elements imitation, fantasy, and social team building. In a between-subjects design (N = 96), the effect of a gamified warm-up preceding a dance performance on audience participation during the dance performance was tested, focusing on the observed participation rate, intensity, and willingness, as well as on the audience experience of participation. Analyses showed a significant increase in participation rate, in participation intensity, and in reported liking of the participation. It is concluded that persuasive game design can be applied effectively to increase audience participation. Future research on the generalizability of the findings to other domains and on the isolated motivational effects of warm-up components is discussed.