Persuasive technology (PT) is increasingly being used in the health and wellness domain to motivate and assist users with different lifestyles and behavioral health issues to change their attitudes and/or behaviors. There is growing evidence that PT can be effective at promoting behaviors in many health and wellness domains, including promoting physical activity (PA), healthy eating, and reducing sedentary behavior (SB). SB has been shown to pose a risk to overall health. Thus, reducing SB and increasing PA have been the focus of much PT work. This paper aims to provide a systematic review of PTs for promoting PA and reducing SB. Specifically, we answer some fundamental questions regarding its design and effectiveness based on an empirical review of the literature on PTs for promoting PA and discouraging SB, from 2003 to 2019 (170 papers). There are three main objectives: (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of PT in promoting PA and reducing SB; (2) to summarize and highlight trends in the outcomes such as system design, research methods, persuasive strategies employed and their implementaions, behavioral theories, and employed technological platforms; (3) to reveal the pitfalls and gaps in the present literature that can be leveraged and used to inform future research on designing PT for PA and SB.

Mobile phone technology has been progressively employed in persuasive technology interventions design to promote physical activity (PA) and discourage sedentary behavior (SB). Because of the ubiquitous nature and seamless integration of mobile phones into user's daily lives, mobile phone-based persuasive technologies (PTs) have the potential to influence and change a user's behavior or attitude continuously. This paper provides a systematic review of 15 years of research (80 papers) focusing on the effectiveness of mobile phone-based PT in promoting PA and reducing SB. Specifically, this review aims to (1) assess the effectiveness of mobile phone-based PT in persuading users to be more physically active and less sedentary, (2) highlight research trends in this area including other technology platforms implemented along with mobile phone-based PT, (3) reveal some strengths and weaknesses of existing mobile phone interventions in PA and SB domains, and (4) provide recommendations to inform future research in this area.

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