Exploring engagement with health apps: the emerging importance of situational involvement and individual characteristics

Abstract

Purpose Health apps offer a potential approach to support healthier food behaviours but a lack of sufficient engagement may limit effectiveness. This study aims to use a user engagement theoretical lens to examine the factors that influence app engagement over time and may prompt disengagement. Design/methodology/approach A phenomenological exploration of the lived experience was used. Women from a lower socioeconomic background (based on the occupation and employment status of the household’s primary income earner) were randomly assigned to use one of two apps for a minimum of eight weeks. Multiple data collection methods, including accompanied shops, researcher observations, interviews, participant reflective accounts and questionnaires, were used at different time-points to examine engagement. Theoretical thematic analysis was conducted to explore the engagement experience and relevant social, personal and environmental influences. Findings Healthy food involvement appears to drive app engagement. Changes in situational involvement may contribute to fluctuation in engagement intensity over time as the saliency of personal goals change. Negatively valenced engagement dimensions may contribute to the overall expression of engagement. A lack of congruency with personal goals or an imbalance between perceived personal investment and value was expressed as the primary reasons for disengagement. Research limitations/implications Situational involvement may act as a trigger of different engagement phases. There is a need to better distinguish between enduring and situational involvement in engagement research. Practical implications Individual characteristics may shape engagement and propensity for disengagement, which highlights the practical importance of incorporating tailored features into app design. Originality/value Findings broaden the current conceptualisation of engagement within the digital space and prompt a reconsideration of the role of situational involvement and negatively valenced dimensions throughout the engagement process.

When do digital calorie counters reduce numeracy bias in grocery shopping? Evidence from an online experiment

“…This is particularly evident when consumers have a food-related health condition and when they are faced with time pressure. These results contribute to the literature on technology and healthy choices (Flaherty et al, 2017;Flaherty et al, 2021;Manika et al, 2017aManika et al, , 2017b and are in line with recent studies by Gustafson and Zeballos (2019), who also assess how a calorie counter can help consumers to make healthier food choices. However, our study diverges from their work, as it tests the calorie counter in a more complex choice task where consumers make a much larger number of food choice decisions.…”

“…This research contributes to the emerging literature on the use of digital technologies to promote behaviour change in consumer choices by showing how aggregated nutritional information can change consumer choice. It enriches existing literature which has begun to examine the impact of technology on health-related behaviours (Flaherty et al, 2017;Flaherty et al, 2021;Manika et al, 2017aManika et al, , 2017b and also shows how information processing models (Moorman, 1990) can be applied in new contexts and augmented based on changes to technology. Overall, our results are partly in line with recent studies examining the impact of digital technologies in reducing consumer numeracy biases (Gustafson and Zeballos, 2019) and are strongly consistent with the literature on nutrition labelling more generally (Cowburn and Stockley, 2005;Grunert and Wills, 2007;Grunert et al, 2010;Moorman, 1990), as we find evidence that such information should be more relevant to consumers and that our results are partly contingent upon motivation to process nutritional information.…”

Measures of Engagement With mHealth Interventions in Patients With Heart Failure: Scoping Review

“…Patients may be inclined to regulate these emotions by decreasing the extent of their interaction with the intervention. Hence, the interplay between the emotional and behavioral domains of engagement within the context of technical problems could influence patterns of patient engagement with mHealth [ 68 ]. Thus, assessing the 3 domains of patient engagement may be pivotal in understanding the complexity of patient engagement with mHealth interventions.…”

Boosting engagement with healthy food on social media

“…Marketing food content on social media encourages users to engage in a myriad of ways, including liking and sharing content with their friends (Dhaoui and Webster, 2021; Dolan et al , 2019; Drummond et al , 2020; Flaherty et al , 2021; Philp et al , 2022; Taheri et al , 2021). Recent work has demonstrated that social media ads for unhealthy food typically evoke more positive responses than healthy food – they are more likely to be recalled, recognized, viewed longer and shared (Murphy et al , 2020).…”