You Keep Me Hangin’ On: An Analysis of Motivational Mechanisms in Nutrition Apps

Abstract

About 200 new apps are added to the “Health & Wellbeing” category in the app store every year. However, high dropout rates due to little long-term user motivation persist. Despite considerable research on motivation, especially in the context of games, there are only limited insights into existing theories and mechanics in the field of health apps. Thus, in this research paper, we investigated different motivational mechanisms combined in one nutrition app to determine whether Bartle Player Types, Temporal Motivation Theory, Arousal Theory, Operand Conditioning as well as Pinks Framework of intrinsic motivation can be applied in this context. A technical artifact was developed which imitated a nutrition app and was enhanced with various gamification elements. This enabled a detailed investigation of user behavior within a conducted user study with 42 participants from whom 20 filled out the follow-up questionnaire. We could show a strong influence of the Bartle Player Types on favorite motivation mechanisms as well as strong correlation between feature preference and measured usage, feature preference and perceived usage as well as measured usage and perceived usage.