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Theoretical Perspectives on User Engagement

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Why Engagement Matters

Abstract

This chapter examines the theoretical foundations of user engagement. First, the definition of user engagement is deconstructed using key principles for evaluating concepts: clarity, scope and meaning. Second, two theoretical frameworks, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory and John Dewey’s Philosophy of Experience, are presented that have informed much work on user engagement over the past decades. Third, several measurement and behavioural models of user engagement are articulated and compared. Though not an exhaustive review of the literature, the chapter identifies key works on user engagement over the past 30 years and areas of consensus and divergence in how user engagement is conceptualized in the research. The purpose of the chapter is not to propose a unified theory of engagement but to present a series of unifying propositions and open questions to inform future studies and to strengthen the theoretical framing of user engagement in theory and application

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Acknowledgements

I wish to express sincere thanks to Brett Lee for the thoughtful and sometimes rambling (though wonderfully so) discussions about user engagement and to Paul Cairns for helping me to see “the forest for the trees” in working through versions of this chapter. I would also like to acknowledge the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Network of Centres of Excellence in Graphics, Animation and New Media Project (GRAND NCE) for supporting my research over the past several years.

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    Heather O’Brien

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  1. Heather O’Brien
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  1. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Heather O'Brien

  2. University of York, York, United Kingdom

    Paul Cairns

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O’Brien, H. (2016). Theoretical Perspectives on User Engagement. In: O'Brien, H., Cairns, P. (eds) Why Engagement Matters. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27446-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27446-1_1

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