Determining the Determinants of Health Behaviour Change through an Online Social Network

The ABC framework provides determinants for leveraging the motivational power of online social networks with the determinants for promoting health behaviour changes. We designed VivoSpace, a medium fidelity prototype of an online social network to promote healthy behaviour changes based on the guidelines for incorporating these determinants. We evaluated the determinants of appeal, belonging and commitment using both direct and indirect methods with 36 adult subjects. Indirect evaluation methods included a helping game experiment, adopted from experimental behavioural economics to measure indirect reciprocity evoked by VivoSpace, which is an important factor in developing belonging. Similarly, an in-group experiment was adopted to evaluate group commitment. Our results show that VivoSpace’s design based on the ABC framework result in a strong degree of agreement with the appeal determinants with evidence for the promotion of belonging and commitment. Thus, we have evidence for the effectiveness of design elements for evoking behaviour change to improve health using an online social network.