TAILORING PERSUASIVE MOBILE TECHNOLOGY FOR PROMOTING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Abstract

Persuasive technology (PT) is increasingly employed in the health and wellness domain to motivate and assist users with various lifestyles and behavioral health issues to alter their attitudes and behaviors. There is increasing evidence that PT can effectively encourage behavior change in many health and wellness areas, including promoting physical activity (PA), healthy eating, and reducing sedentary behavior (SB). Persuasive PA applications (apps) have proven to be effective in promoting desirable behavior change and mitigating non-desirable behaviors by employing various persuasive strategies, such as reminders and suggestions. Tailoring persuasive PA systems, particularly mobile PA apps, can enhance their effectiveness. However, limited research has been conducted on culturally tailoring persuasive strategies to individuals' PA stages of change (SoC) using the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) and their motivations for behavior change using the ARCS motivation model. Most of these apps follow a one-size-fits-all approach, primarily targeting individuals from developed countries while overlooking other regions, such as Arabic countries. In this study, I investigate whether there are differences between Arabic and non-Arabic populations and develop a culturally and motivationally based model that offers guidance for tailoring persuasive PA interventions to individuals from both Arabic and non-Arabic populations. This model was developed via a large-scale user study that assessed the effectiveness of various persuasive strategies and their implementations while taking into consideration the participants' needs, preferences, and recommendations. Our findings reveal variations in the persuasiveness and effectiveness of the persuasive strategies and their various implementations for Arabic and non-Arabic audiences. Based on these findings, I developed guidelines for tailoring persuasive PA apps. Finally, using these guidelines, I developed app prototypes illustrating how our model’s results can be employed. This work contributes to the existing literature by integrating theories and models including the TTM, SoC, the ARCS motivation model, and the Persuasive System Design (PSD) model, along with other strategies beyond the PSD model, to identify patterns in people’s motivations and responses to persuasive strategies and their implementations that will inform the tailoring of PA apps to Arabic populations. It offers valuable guidelines for tailoring persuasive apps in the PA domain.