Persuasive technology for health and wellness: State-of-the-art and emerging trends

Abstract

The evolving field of persuasive and behavior change technology is increasingly targeted at influencing behavior in the area of health and wellness. This paper provides an empirical review of 16 years (85 papers) of literature on persuasive technology for health and wellness to: (1.) answer important questions regarding the effectiveness of persuasive technology for health and wellness, (2.) summarize and highlight trends in the technology design, research methods, motivational strategies, theories, and health behaviors targeted by research to date, (3.) uncover pitfalls of existing persuasive technological interventions for health and wellness, and (4.) suggest directions for future research.

A word of advice: how to tailor motivational text messages based on behavior change theory to personality and gender

“…1). Based on a recent meta-analysis of 85 studies [40], it is the most widely used behavior change model in health-related persuasive technologies. Moreover, it has proven to be effective in combination with tailored text messages to influence someone's physical activity behavior [34].…”

Positive Gaming

“…Gamification [2] and games have been used and studied in a variety of applications related to health and wellbeing [3,7,9]. Nevertheless, their application in the domains of wellbeing and flourishing (the pursue of a happy and meaningful life rather than the simple inexistence of illness) remain considerably less studied than other more common application areas, such as physical health, fitness, or nutrition.…”

“…Positive Computing [1] is the use of digital technology to foster flourishing with both hedonic and eudaimonic approaches. Games have been cited as one of the promising approaches to Positive Computing; yet, there are very few studies aimed at designing games or gameful applications for flourishing [3,7] or even understanding how serious or recreational games can lead to flourishing. Notable exceptions are the works of Vella et al [11][12][13] and Johnson et al [4], which have proposed conceptual frameworks and tested wellbeing promotion in recreational games, as well as McGonigal's work [5,6], which aims to promote mental health and wellbeing.…”

Formative Evaluation to Determine Facilitators and Barriers to Nurse-driven Implementation: Designing an Inpatient mHealth Intervention to Support Smoking Cessation

“…Electronic and mHealth technology for health behavior change has developed at rapid speeds in the last decade [1]. Enabling patients with chronic disease to benefit from these technologies is a present concern, with leaders in healthcare calling for accessible, relevant, affordable and timely technology [2].…”