Previously submitted to: JMIR Serious Games (no longer under consideration since May 08, 2026)
Date Submitted: Dec 9, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Role of Gamified Technology in Physical Education Teaching: Psychological Impacts on Student Motivation and Engagement
ABSTRACT
Background:
Gamified technology is increasingly integrated into physical education to enhance student participation, motivation, and learning. However, existing research mainly examines isolated factors such as enjoyment or performance, lacking a comprehensive model explaining how gamified systems influence psychological needs, motivation, multidimensional engagement, and learning outcomes. A theoretically grounded, large-scale empirical investigation is needed to clarify these mechanisms.
Objective:
This study aimed to develop and validate an integrated structural model explaining how gamified technology influences psychological need satisfaction, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, and learning outcomes in physical education.
Methods:
A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 500 students (mean age 18.90 years) from three countries who had prior experience with gamified physical education. The measurement instrument included 53 reflective indicators across 11 constructs. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5000 bootstrap samples was used to evaluate indicator reliability, construct validity, structural paths, effect sizes, predictive relevance, and multi-stage mediation.
Results:
Gamified technology significantly enhanced autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction (β = 0.268–0.312, p < .001). These needs strongly predicted intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (β = 0.188–0.342, p < .001). Both motivation types significantly increased behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement (β = 0.221–0.411, p < .001). All engagement dimensions positively predicted learning outcomes (β = 0.265–0.331, p < .001), explaining 58.9% of their variance (R² = 0.589). Mediation analysis confirmed a full sequential pathway in which gamified technology influenced learning indirectly through psychological needs → motivation → engagement.
Conclusions:
Gamified physical education improves learning not through game elements alone but through the activation of core psychological processes that enhance motivation and multidimensional engagement. By validating a comprehensive SDT-based model with strong predictive accuracy, this study provides actionable insights for designing effective gamified PE programs that foster deeper engagement and better learning outcomes.
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