Beyond Intrinsic: Using the Quality of Extrinsic Motivation to Understand Effort in Virtual Rehabilitation and Exergames

Intrinsic motivation is often regarded as the ideal when developing computer-mediated technology for health and rehabilitation activities in HCI-research. Even though intrinsic motivation is indeed a sustainable and self-rewarding form of motivation, arguably both extrinsic and intrinsic types of motivation are influential factors to an individual's self-regulation that ultimately drives human behavior. Thus, HCI-researchers should embrace instruments that encompasses the wider continuum of motivation rather than just intrinsic motivation alone. To this end we propose a (yet unvalidated) instrument based on the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS). We encourage researchers to utilize scales that measures the wider variety of motivational quality during interventions involving older adults and exergames in virtual rehabilitation.