Online Sharing of Physical Activity: Does It Accelerate the Impact of a Health Promotion Program?

Abstract

Influence on health behavior from peers is well known and it has been shown that participants in an online physical activity promotion program are generally more successful when they share their achievements through an online community. However, more detailed insights are needed into the mechanisms that explain the influence of a community on physical activity levels (PAL). This paper discusses a detailed analysis of a data set of participants in an online physical activity promotion program. The analysis focuses on the comparison two groups of participants, namely participants who will join an online community at some point in time and participants who will never join such a community. A well-balanced selection is made to eliminate to a large extent factors that dilute the effect of the willingness to partake in a community. We create statistical models that describe the PAL increase at the end of the program. A comparison of these models shows that participants that will participate in a community not only have a higher PAL at the start of the program, but also that the PAL increase is significantly greater compared to participants that will not become community members. The results further support the hypothesis that the possibility to share achievements is an important feature of successful health promotion programs. At the same time, it raises the question whether part of the success is caused by a selection bias, as people that are willing to participate in a community are already more active at the start.

Explaining Changes in Physical Activity Through a Computational Model of Social Contagion

“…Previous work has shown that the combination of participating in the program and joining the online community is associated with a small but significant average increase in PAL [11]. The objective of the current work was to demonstrate whether the dynamics of users' physical activity levels can be (partially) explained by social contagion.…”

“…The simple linear model describes the effect of the physical activity promotion program and the online community on the users' physical activity levels. Previous analyses have shown that this effect is an average PAL increase of 0.0005821 per day [11]. These analyses were based on a subset of users from the same data set, with all users being in their first plan and member of the community.…”

“…In this paper, we use a data set about health behaviour in a social context to understand the underlying social processes. It is a continuation of earlier work on this subject [10,11]. In [11], a large data set of an online physical activity promotion program was used to compare the physical activity levels of people who are part of an online social network with those who did not opt to join the network.…”

“…It is a continuation of earlier work on this subject [10,11]. In [11], a large data set of an online physical activity promotion program was used to compare the physical activity levels of people who are part of an online social network with those who did not opt to join the network. One of the conclusions was that participants who are part of an online community have significantly higher activity levels and a higher increase in activity compared to participants who chose not to become part of the community.…”

Physical Activity Promotion and Digital Interventions

“…(Rose et al, 2018). These could be helpful in removing obstacles and promoting PA, particularly when taking into account the social support qualities and group-wide possibilities of digital interventions to promote PA (Manzoor et al, 2016;Zeng et al, 2018).…”