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By integrating stimulus-organism-response theory and uses and gratifications theory, this study explored the salient gamification factors that satisfy the gratifications of conference attendees in the context of an event gamification mobile app and their relationships with conference engagement, continuance intention and word-of-mouth.

The questionnaire was developed in Qualtrics and administered on a gamification application called Goosechase during an annual hospitality conference. The proposed hypotheses were tested using the partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The gratifications of social presence, education and entertainment through a gamification mobile app influences attendees’ engagement during the conference while achievement gratification does not. Positive effects of conference engagement on their continuous intention and WOM have been also validated.

By adopting a unique integrated approach that utilizes UGT and S-O-R framework, while considering conference engagement as work-related engagement, this study offers a fresh perspective on gamification apps and discusses its theoretical and practical implications in depth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected around 216 countries and territories worldwide and more than 2000 cities in India, alone. The smart cities mission (SCM) in India started in 2015 and 100 smart cities were selected to be initiated with a total project cost of INR 2031.72 billion. Smart city strategies play an important role in implementing the measures adopted by the government such as the issuance of social distancing regulations and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, there is no research reported on the role of smart cities strategies in managing the COVID-19 outbreak in developing countries.

This paper aims to address the research gap in smart cities, technology and healthcare management through a review of the literature and primary data collected using semi-structured interviews.

Each city is unique and has different challenges, the study revealed six key findings on how smart cities in India managed the COVID-19 outbreak. They used: Integrated Command and Control Centres, Artificial Intelligence and Innovative Application-based Solutions, Smart Waste Management Solutions, Smart Healthcare Management, Smart Data Management and Smart Surveillance.

This paper contributes to informing policymakers of key lessons learnt from the management of COVID-19 in developing countries like India from a smart cities’ perspective. This paper draws on the six Cs for the implications directed to leaders and decision-makers to rethink and act on COVID-19. The six Cs are: Crisis management leadership, Credible communication, Collaboration, Creative governance, Capturing knowledge and Capacity building.