Investigation of the Moderating Effect of Culture on Users’ Susceptibility to Persuasive Features in Fitness Applications

Abstract

Persuasive technologies have been identified as a potential motivational tool to tackle the rising problem of physical inactivity worldwide, with research showing they are more likely to be successful if tailored to the target audience. However, in the physical activity domain, there is limited research on how culture moderates users’ susceptibility to the various persuasive features employed in mobile health applications aimed to motivate behavior change. To bridge this gap, we conducted an empirical study among 256 participants from collectivist (n = 67) and individualist (n = 189) cultures to determine their culture-specific persuasion profiles with respect to six persuasive features commonly employed in fitness applications on the market. The persuasive features include two personal features (goal-setting/self-monitoring and reward) and four social features (competition, cooperation, social learning and social comparison). We based our study on the rating of storyboards (on which each of the six persuasive features is illustrated) and the ranking of the six persuasive features in terms of perceived persuasiveness. The results of our analysis showed that users from individualist and collectivist cultures significantly differ in their persuasion profiles. Based on our rating measure, collectivist users are more likely to be susceptible to all six persuasive features (personal and social) than individualist users, who are only likely to be susceptible to personal features. However, based on our ranking measure, individualist users are more likely to be susceptible to personal features (goal-setting/self-monitoring and reward) than collectivist users. In contrast, collectivist users are more likely to be susceptible to social features (cooperation and social learning) than individualist users. Based on these findings, we provide culture-specific persuasive technology design guidelines. Our study is the first to uncover the moderating effect of culture on users’ susceptibility to commonly employed persuasive features in fitness applications.

HOMEX: Persuasive Technology Acceptance Model and the Moderating Effect of Culture

“…Both classifications have been widely adopted in many HCI and persuasive technology studies (Khaled et al, 2006;Oyibo et al, 2018e). Moreover, a large amount of research (Sun, 2001;Kyriakoullis and Zaphiris, 2015;Oyibo and Vassileva, 2019) in HCI and persuasive technology shows that culture plays a significant role in users' perceptions and usage of information systems, such as websites.…”

“…For example, research shows that Goal-Setting/Self-Monitoring (Orji et al, 2018) is a fundamental feature of a persuasive health application users care about. Moreover, research (Oyibo and Vassileva, 2019) shows that Goal-Setting/Self-Monitoring and Reward are some of the most persuasive features users from both types of culture are susceptible to. So highlighting a feature such as Goal-Setting/Self-Monitoring in the advertisement of the application will amount to showcasing one of its utilities to the users (helping them track their behavior), which can help inform users' ultimate decision to use the application.…”

Potential and effects of personalizing gameful fitness applications using behavior change intentions and Hexad user types

“…Gender-wise differences have also been demonstrated by Oyibo et al (2017), who found that competition and virtual rewards are perceived as more persuasive by male participants. Furthermore, Oyibo and Vassileva (2019) investigated whether there are differences between collectivist and individualist cultures regarding the relevance of persuasive features in the physical activity domain. Their results show that collectivist cultures are more susceptible to persuasive features in general, whereas individualist cultures are more affected by personal persuasive features.…”

Persuasive Features that Drive the Adoption of a Fitness Application and the Moderating Effect of Age and Gender

“…For example, Reward, which entails offering incentives to users such as points, levels and badges, has been widely studied in prior studies [4]. However, most of the studies such as [12][13][14] have been focused on users' receptiveness. Munson and Consolvo [4] particularly investigated the effectiveness of Reward in a real-life fitness app.…”

“…Finally, just as Reward and Goal-Setting/Self-Monitoring, social features such as Cooperation, Social Comparison, Competition and Social Learning have been studied as well in the prior literature. However, most of the existing studies [2,13,16] focus on users' receptiveness to these social strategies and not their potential, in the face of other persuasive features, to predict users' adoption of fitness applications. Table 1.…”