Investigation of the moderating effect of race-based personalization of behavior model design in fitness application

Abstract

Persuasive technologies are more likely to be successful if personalized to the target audience. However, in the context of exercise behavior modeling in fitness applications, there is limited research on the moderating effect of personalization based on the race characteristic of the user. To bridge this gap, we carried out an empirical study (n = 669) to examine how race-based personalization moderates the relationships between the perceived persuasiveness of behavior model design and three key social-cognitive determinants of behavior: outcome expectations, self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulation beliefs. We based our investigation on user evaluation of bodyweight-exercise behavior models (videos) featured in a fitness app prototype based on all four constructs. Our results showed that, in both tailored and untailored contexts, behavior models (i.e., their perceived persuasiveness) have a significant influence on both black/brown and white users' outcome expectations and self-regulation beliefs. However, they are more likely to be effective in influencing black/brown observers than white observers in the respective contexts. Moreover, black/brown models are more likely to have a significant influence on users' self-efficacy beliefs than white models. Specifically, it is only when the black/brown models are tailored to black/brown observers and contra-tailored to white observers that the perceived persuasiveness of behavior model design has a significant effect on self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, among black/brown observers, our results indicate that behavior model designs are more likely to be effective when tailored than when contra-tailored or untailored, but this is hardly the case among white users. Our study contributes to the body of knowledge by being one of the first to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of race-based personalization of exercise behavior models in the domain of persuasive technologies aimed at motivating behavior change.

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

“…However, for these applications to be more effective, there is a need for designers to tailor them to the target audience. Research [1][2][3] shows that understanding potential users' persuasion profiles will help designers tailor persuasive health applications to future users to make them more effective. Persuasion profile [4] is an ordered list of persuasive strategies or features (in terms of perceived persuasiveness) to which potential users of a persuasive health application are likely to be susceptible.…”

The Effect of Culture and Social-Cognitive Characteristics on App Preference and Willingness to Use a Fitness App

“…The use of a fitness app (interface screenshot as a stimulus) in the study, unlike prior studies, has the potential to increase the social-cognitive beliefs of the respondents, e.g., given its perceived persuasiveness. In a prior study that featured virtual coaches (videos of behavior models demonstrating how to perform bodyweight exercise correctly) [56,57], we found a significant relationship between their perceived persuasiveness and respondents' social-cognitive beliefs including outcome expectations and perceived self-regulation.…”

“…Finally, it is interesting to find in Figure 10 that, aside from outcome expectation, the other three constructs (self-efficacy, self-regulation, and social-support) are substantially and consistently higher for the current study than for the prior study, with the pairwise differences ranging from 20% to 40%. A plausible explanation for the large pairwise differences between both studies is the involvement of a fitness app in the current study, which has the potential to increase users' self-efficacy, self-regulation, and social support in a real-life context [56]. For example, in the current study, the self-efficacy question was introduced by the statement "How confident are you that you can perform bodyweight exercise [regularly] at home for the next one month with the aid of the fitness app even.…”

The Relationship between Perceived Health Message Motivation and Social Cognitive Beliefs in Persuasive Health Communication

“…The R 2 values is less than 30% are regarded as low in path modeling [55]. These low values indicate that there are other important variables (e.g., perceived persuasiveness of exercise model [46]) not captured in the current model that may account for the variance of the target social-cognitive-belief constructs.…”

“…To achieve the research objectives, I prototyped a fitness app in which a fitness expert demonstrates to the user how to correctly perform a bodyweight exercise (Figure 1). I considered gender (male and female), race (black and white) and exercise type (push-up and squat) [46]. The current study does not investigate the effect of these variables.…”