Promoting physical activity through internet: A persuasive technology view

Abstract

Participation in regular physical activity (PA) is critical to sustaining good health. While a few attempts have been made to use internet-based interventions to promote PA, no system review has been conducted in determining the effectiveness of the intervention. The purpose of this study was to conduct a review under the framework of persuasive technology (PT). Based on a comprehensive of literature search, nice experimental studies were identified and evaluated using the PT functional triad defined by Fogg in 2003[1]. It was found that only two studies led to short-term impact in promoting PA and, furthermore, two studies have found that the intervention based traditional print materials worked better. From a perspective of PT, none of the studies designed its intervention based on the framework of captology and few took full advantages of PT functions. Designing new-generation, PT based internet intervention and examining related human factors are urgently needed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.