Learning to Stop Smoking: Understanding Persuasive Applications’ Long-Term Behavior Change Effectiveness Through User Achievement Motivation

Abstract

Compromising smoking cessation applications’ effectiveness, many users relapse. We propose that long-term adoption of persuasive technology is (partly) dependent on users’ motivational orientation. Therefore, we studied the potential relationship between user’s achievement motivation and the long-term behavior change effectiveness of persuasive technology. One-hundred users of a smoking cessation app filled out a questionnaire assessing their motivational orientation and (long-term) behavior change rates. Based on research findings, we expected that participants with stronger learning goal orientation (who are focused on self-improvement and persistent when facing failure) would report a higher long-term behavior change success rate. In contrast, we expected that participants with a stronger performance goal orientation (focused on winning, for whom solitary failures can undermine intrinsic motivation) would report lower long-term success. Results confirmed our hypotheses. This research broadens our understanding of how persuasive applications’ effectiveness relates to user achievement motivation.