Nutri-Smober: A Preliminary Study to Investigate the Domain Dependency of Behaviour Change Strategies in Persuasive Games

Abstract

Although persuasive strategies have been shown to be effective at promoting behaviour change across various domains of health and wellness, the domain dependency of the effectiveness of these strategies, when applied to persuasive games targeting different domains remains vague. In this preliminary study, we investigate the domain dependency of eight persuasive strategies implemented in two persuasive games. In a between-study of 31 participants, we investigated the perceived effectiveness of two similar persuasive games, implementing the same set of strategies but focusing on two different domains: healthy eating and smoking cessation, with only changes in their context to suit each domain. Our results revealed that although there was no overall significant difference in the overall effectiveness of the two interventions, seven of the persuasive strategies implemented were significantly effective for healthy eating while only two of them were significantly effective for smoking cessation. We also present discussions from participants' comments of how to improve these features for future game design.