Susceptibility to fitness app's persuasive features: Differences between acting and non-acting users

Abstract

The incidence of physical inactivity, obesity and non-communicable diseases is on the rise globally due to the sedentary lifestyles occasioned by modernity and technology. As a means of tackling the inactivity problem, which is almost becoming a global epidemic, research has shown that persuasive technology holds bright prospects. However, in the physical activity domain, there is limited research on users' persuasion profiles and the differences between users who are currently exercising (acting users) and those who have the intentions to exercise in the future (non-acting users). To bridge this gap, we conducted a study among 190 participants resident in two individualist countries to determine the susceptibility profile of both user types and their differences. We based our study on storyboards, illustrating six commonly employed persuasive features in fitness apps. The results of our analysis showed that both user types are most likely to be susceptible to Goal-Setting/Self-Monitoring, followed by Reward and Competition, and least likely to be susceptible to Cooperation, Social Comparison and Social Learning. In particular, acting users are more likely to be susceptible to Social Learning than non-acting users. Overall, our findings suggest that, irrespective of user type, personal features will be more likely effective than social features among users from individualist cultures. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of fitness apps design.