Persuasive Technology: Development of Persuasive and Behavior Change Support Systems

Definitions regarding Persuasive Technology are often introduced with the accompanying remark: without using coercion and deception. For this position paper, we investigated, evaluated, and discussed the term Persuasive Technology and its connotations. We invesstigated whether Persuasive Technology is perceived with negative connotations such as coercive and deceptive, and, how in comparison, similar labels (such as Behavior Change Support System and Digital Behavior Change Intervention) were perceived. We conducted an online survey where participants (N = 488) rated their attitude towards these systems in the context of a system description, indicated to what extent they agreed with 10 descriptors (such as, manipulative, motivating, or supportive) in the context of a system description, and whether this system in general, is at risk of being perceived as coercive, manipulative, deceptive, or propagandistic. We found that when considering risks of systems in general, labeling them as PT results in them being perceived significantly more forceful than all other labels, and switching the labeling of a system to Digital Behavior Change Intervention results in them being perceived significantly more captivating compared to a neutral system label. The findings suggest that when choosing labels to use for technology or systems it is essential to consider the impact labels can have on how the system or technology is perceived, regardless of the actual function of the system. These findings are relevant for the field of Persuasive Technology and the Persuasive Technology conference specifically. This paper is meant to spark further discussion in the field and at the conference.

Various nonverbal behaviors – often referred to as nonverbal immediacy - of both human and virtual teachers have been shown to play a crucial role in student learning. However, past literature provides limited evidence of the effect of a virtual agent’s vocalization, as a nonverbal immediacy cue, on learning outcomes. Even less is known about the effect of nonverbal immediacy on learning when used in conjunction with virtual behavioral modeling. Earlier research provides evidence that virtual behavioral modeling could be an effective instructional method to facilitate learning in multimedia learning environments. The current work investigated the effects of a virtual model that used stronger vs. weaker vocal nonverbal immediacy on affective learning and cognitive learning (both perceived and objective). The operationalization of the virtual model’s vocal nonverbal immediacy has been realized by manipulating the agent’s vocal parameters of pitch and speech rate. We predicted, that a virtual model with stronger vocal nonverbal immediacy (i.e., higher pitch and faster speech rate) would be more effective in influencing individuals’ learning outcomes, as compared to a virtual model with weaker vocal nonverbal immediacy (i.e., lower pitch and slower speech rate). In accordance with our hypotheses, results revealed that participants who received instructions from a virtual model that used stronger vocal nonverbal immediacy showed greater affective learning, and increased perceptions of learning. Support was also found for an effect on participants’ recall. Results and implications of the study’s findings are discussed.

Despite the increased usage and potential benefits of self-tracking technologies for pursuing healthy lifestyles, the relationship that users have with these personal devices has remained under-studied. The current paper presents a field study to explore the perceived role of self-tracking devices as social actors. Participants received a pedometer which they carried on their person for one day. Users’ access to numerical feedback and the feeling of being tracked were manipulated, and users were interviewed afterwards regarding their experiences and their perceived social relationship to the tracker. Results of a thematic analysis indicated that in general, the feeling of being tracked led to higher self-awareness regarding participants’ walking activity. In particular, having access to agent feedback gave rise to more frequent self-evaluative reports towards one’s performance as well as a closer relationship between the device and its user. The results extend the CASA (Computers As Social Actors) paradigm by demonstrating that the capturing (and feeding back) of data can make a device be perceived as a social actor and be described in relational terms, even in the absence of clear social cues.

Literature on persuasive technology acknowledges the importance of promoting reflection within design research and practice. This paper takes up a reflection framework suggested in previous research as assisting the reasoning of researchers, designers or other stakeholders concerning values, goals, actions, and their consequences in a project. It contributes to this research by demonstrating additional evidence for the applicability of the reflection framework by applying it to a published case. This work can guide researchers and practitioners by means of issues to be considered while reflecting on as well as communicating value-related aspects in a project, so that significant value choices and the rationale for actions taken to promote them are clear.

Many personal informatics systems present users’ behavioral data in numbers or graphs for their reflection, which may not be effective on a daily basis because people do not always act like data scientists. Representation of behavioral data in virtual environments can provide information at a glance. Grounded in conceptual blending theory, insights from social psychology, and existing persuasive design principles, this article is conceptual-theoretical. It argues that representations should be designed like virtual consequences of behavior and related to users’ existing knowledge of comparable cause-effect relationships in order to prompt one’s imaginative beliefs about the behavioral-virtual causality. It proposes a framework that guides designing representations of behavioral data, including (1) identifying scenarios with comparable causality, (2) examining and grounding the mappings in embodied experiences, (3) performing blends between the behavior and the identified scenario, with different virtual consequences corresponding to different user behaviors, and (4) rendering virtual consequences as feedback that dynamically anchors the scenario for similar blends in users. Design cases are presented and analyzed to demonstrate how embodied mappings can be constructed for interventions for lifestyle habits.

This paper studies the possibilities to support participatory design processes with persuasive technologies. Drawing on extant work by Elizabeth Sanders, it introduces a comprehensive framework for participatory design which highlights challenges for collaborative attitudes and behavior. To see how persuasive technologies can answer these challenges, the paper reviews the proceedings of the PERSUASIVE conferences since 2010. It identifies 186 application cases, which can be related to twelve different technology platforms. Following a design science research approach, the paper introduces an online navigator to explore different scenarios to support participatory design processes resulting from the findings of the literature review. The navigator can be applied together with Fogg’s eight-step design process for creating persuasive technology. To evaluate the navigator, two artificial evaluation iterations are conducted: ex ante a criteria-based analysis to show its theoretical efficacy and ex post problem-centered interviews with experts to gain further insights. The results contribute to a better understanding of the role that persuasive technologies can play in participatory design activities.

This paper describes an investigation into the effectiveness of ArguMessage, a system that uses argumentation schemes and limited user input to semi-automatically generate persuasive messages encouraging behaviour change that follow specific argumentation patterns. We conducted user studies in the domains of healthy eating and email security to investigate its effectiveness. Our results show that ArguMessage in general supported users in generating messages based on the argumentation schemes. However, there were some issues in particular with copying the example messages, and some system improvements need to be made. Participants were generally satisfied with the messages produced, with the exception of those produced by two schemes (‘Argument from memory with goal’ and ‘Argument from values with goal’) which were removed after the first study.

Inspired by recent debates on drone technology and privacy protection, this research examines how negative consequences of drone usage can be mitigated by tailoring information about drone employment to the environmental context in which they are used. Additionally, this study seeks to clarify the role of information needs people have when confronted with drones in different settings. Using virtual reality environments and a dedicated virtual app providing opportunities for the public to learn more about drone usage, participants were confronted with drone surveillance at either a business area, at a park, or during an event, and received transparent information on drone usage or a neutral message proving no information on drone usage. Additionally, participants could obtain more information on drone usage by clicking on one or more information buttons in the app. Results show that, compared to an event, participants were less acceptant of drones in a business area and even less so at the park. Further analyses indicated that heightened transparency perceptions resulted in higher levels of trust, perceived control, and drone acceptance. Finally, participants particularly sought information on how drones are used in the business area and park environment, whereas a need for privacy information stood out in the park context. These findings testify to the importance of careful consideration of the environmental context and related communication needs people have when informing the public about drone usage.

Emotions accompany us anytime, even while driving. Thereby especially negative emotional experiences influence our driving behavior and the safety on our roads. A psychological intervention to regulate feelings is to track them, e.g. by labeling them along categories. Thus, the aim of this work is to establish an empirical base to guide the development of a system that encourages the driver to label his or her emotions. This involves asking what the relevant emotions are and how they can be validly labeled in the driving context. For this purpose, a driving study was conducted to collect data on emotional experiences in-situ. For the labeling task, three methodological approaches were used: free responses, dimensional emotion rating (DER), and categorical emotion rating (CER). As a result, while DER and CER lack validity due to ambiguity or priming effects, respectively, the free response method has practical limitations. Following, it is recommended to develop an in-car emotion tracker based on CER and use the free response data to determine the appropriate number and naming of categories that cover a significant range of emotions. An initial analysis of the free responses revealed 40 distinct categories of emotional experiences.

Designing for persuasive interfaces in cars is a challenging task, particularly considering that new systems should not distract drivers. In order to support designers in their decisions, we present a novel framework for persuasive interface design with a focus on automotive UI. It is based on existing behaviour change models and extends them with categories to support interface design decisions. It serves three purposes: (1) it provides a tool to support designers in decision making when designing persuasive interfaces; (2) it can be used to create alternatives to existing systems; (3) it allows to structure literature reviews in order to identify blind spots and serve as an inspiration to ideate new approaches. we provide an analysis of three examples based on it to illustrate its applicability.

This paper aims to discuss how ethics has been addressed within the persuasive technology field and to explore whether ethics is generally applied in persuasive technology (PT) or simply recognized by academics as an important perspective. The paper is based on a literature review of the past 13 years of Persuasive Technology conference papers. The themes identified from the literature review are presented along with summaries of defining works within the field which have contributed to the discussion of ethics. This is followed by a discussion and reflection on the findings of the literature review. Finally, we conclude that ethics does matter but we argue that ethics has not been adequately addressed in the field of PT and that ethical considerations regarding the rights of the designers need to be researched.

A growing challenge for owners, board members, executive managers, and regulators is how to regulate and manage pervasive industry platforms which use persuasive technologies. The persuasive technology community has intentionally steered clear of researching technologies used for coercion or deception. Yet, we now see different shades of persuasive technology used for coercion and deception in the market, causing problems and possibly harm to people. In this article, we will argue that the persuasive technology research community is uniquely positioned to deal with the ethical and moral challenges with pervasive industry platforms and that it has a responsibility to proactively address these challenges. We propose an interdisciplinary research approach, combining knowledge from persuasive technologies, governance, and management studies, to arrive at a framework that can provide direction for future research as well as indicate potential solutions. We introduce the reader to some of the managerial challenges with persuasive technologies used in pervasive industry platforms using an illustrative case study of Facebook and propose three future research directions.

In May 2018, GDPR came into effect in the European Union, placing additional requirements for data sensitive companies on data protection. For persuasive systems which deal with users’ data, taking GDPR into consideration in the design phase is necessary. This paper analyzes and summarizes the requirements by GDPR and discusses how they affect persuasive systems design in terms of design requirements and cost implications.

This paper presents a field study of a persuasive mobile application, 3DFysio, to support patients’ motivation in rheumatoid arthritis rehabilitation. The study was conducted with 10 patients over the period of 9 months, to study the user experience of the application and its persuasive features. The research data was collected with interviews and questionnaires in several phases of the trial. The findings show that the patients perceived the application as a motivational tool to support their rehabilitation process. The main persuasive and motivational aspects for patients were the interactive rehabilitation program, accurate and easily available physiotherapy exercises presented by 3D avatar, and the connection to the personal physiotherapist. 3DFysio seemed to motivate through a combination of persuasive elements on the application and real life. It also supported the establishment of an exercise routine. This paper provides new knowledge of persuasive design to support long-term rehabilitation process by means of mobile applications.

The rapid and ongoing growth in information technology has created many applications for health and wellbeing, including breastfeeding. However, due to a lack of rigorous evaluation of these applications, midwives and other health professionals are unable to recommend any specific breastfeeding application in supporting women towards long-term breastfeeding as a global challenge. Only half of women in developed countries continue any form of breastfeeding for six months. The aim of this study was to evaluate the existing breastfeeding applications based on the Persuasive System Design model. An online search was conducted of the Apple Store in May 2017. The search strategy included the following keywords: breastfeeding, lactation and breast milk. After being checked against the inclusion criteria, each application was assessed based on the four Persuasive System Design Principles. Data from each application was then compared for each element of the design model. Eleven applications met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Primary task support and system credibility support principles were addressed at acceptable level in all of the included apps. However, dialogue support and social support principles and their features like praise, reward and social networking were not identified in many of the applications. This review demonstrates the lack of dialogue support and social support principles that could augment human to computer dialogue. There is a need for designing a breastfeeding app that can persuade women to engage and continue breastfeeding based on a full Persuasive System Design model, thus promoting long term breastfeeding.

Interventions in emergency situations with an aggressor are characterized by potentially high costs but no or very little direct reward for an intervening person. In such moral courage situations, the willingness to act is critical for the safety and well-being of others. Persuasive technology has a high potential for changing attitudes and behavior and thus, supporting such a behavior for the greater good. Aiming at identifying promising persuasive strategies, a meta-analysis to identify factors relevant for moral courage was conducted. Findings highlight seven attitude and competence factors with high potential for attitude and behavior change towards morally courageous behavior. By that, the process model of helping behavior as well as social and motivational psychology results can inform evidence-based persuasive design for technology for moral courage.

Measurement technologies provide persuasive feedback to elicit motivation. However, little is known about whether different types of standards in progress feedback yield different motivational experiences. The current study investigates effects of mastery goals with either a self-based or a task-based standard on motivational experiences. An interactive dance game was developed to provide persuasive progress feedback in the form of a self- versus task-based standard. Participants played the game and reported their experiences with it. Results showed that participants in the self-based condition responded more in terms of Improvement and less in terms of Performance compared to those in the task-based condition. This finding implies that the type of standard in progress feedback can yield different motivational experiences.

People often have long-term personal goals regarding health behavior change. Recently, the processes for achieving these goals have begun to be supported through behavior change support systems and especially through their persuasive software features. In a multidisciplinary research project focused on helping micro-entrepreneurs to recover from work-related strain and stress, a persuasive mobile application was developed. For gaining insights about the workings of the system and its persuasive features, we conducted 29 interviews with the system users. We used thematic analysis method with a deductive emphasis for analyzing the interviews. For some, concurrent usage of wearables or other applications led to discarding our application. Users thought that the application was relatively persuasive, but technical issues reduced its persuasiveness noticeably. When functioning properly, self-monitoring and reminders were found to be supportive for users to achieve their goals. Unobtrusiveness was found to increase the persuasiveness of reminders, while self-monitoring always seems to be dependent on the user’s personal needs.

The concept of goals is prominent in information systems and also artificial intelligence literature such as goal-oriented requirements engineering and self-adaptive systems. Digital motivation systems, e.g. gamification and persuasive technology, utilise the concept of behavioural goals which require a different mind-set on how to elicit and set them up, how to monitor deviation from such goals and how to ensure their completion. Behavioural goals are characterised by a range of factors which are not the main focus in classic information systems and AI literature such as self-efficacy, perceived usefulness. To engineer software supporting goal setting, a concretised taxonomy of goals would help a better-managed analysis and design process. In this paper, we provide a detailed classification of behavioural goals and their associated properties and elements (types, sources, monitoring, feedback, deviation and countermeasures). As a method, we review the literature on goal setting theory and its application in different disciplines. We subsequently develop five reference checklists which would act as a reference point for researchers and practitioners in persuasive and motivational systems.

This paper examines two personalization approaches to web advertisements focusing on the Big Five personality traits: (i) personality-based ad targeting, which predicts users’ receptiveness to ads from their Big Five personality and delivers ads to those with high receptiveness, and (ii) personality-based ad creative design, which specifies target Big Five personalities and tailors ad creative design for each personality. Previous research on (i) has not sufficiently verified whether it works for various ad products/services and ad creatives. To address this, we examined correlation between individuals’ Big Five and their general receptiveness to ads across various ad products/services and ad creatives. Regarding (ii), though its effectiveness has already been demonstrated, what to tailor in the ad creative and how to tailor it have not been clarified in previous research. We focused on cognitive bias, of which various kinds are commonly used in ad creatives today, and, assumed that using different cognitive bias depending on Big Five personality improves ad reaction (e.g., click through rate). Conducting a questionnaire survey, which included over 3,000 subjects and 20 ad creatives, we confirmed that Big Five personality can be significant predictor of receptiveness to ads and verified the potential of (i) to work for various products/services and creatives. On the other hand, regarding (ii), survey results did not support our assumption, the reason for which we consider is that there is no/little interaction effect between Big Five and cognitive bias on ad reaction.

Research has shown that persuasive strategies are more effective when personalized to an individual or group of similar individuals. However, there is little knowledge of how the value derived from consumers’ online shopping can be used for group-based tailoring of persuasive strategies. To contribute to research in this area, we conducted a study of 244 e-commerce shoppers to investigate how the value they derive from shopping online (hedonic or utilitarian value) can be used to tailor the persuasive strategies: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. In addition, we investigate the susceptibility of the participants to these strategies based on their gender. Our results suggest that people that derive hedonic shopping value online are influenced by scarcity, while those that derive utilitarian shopping value are influenced by consensus. In addition, male shoppers who derive hedonic value from online shopping are influenced by commitment. The results presented here can inform e-commerce developers and stakeholders on how to tailor influence strategies to consumers based on the value the consumers derive from online shopping.

Persuasive technologies use a variety of strategies and principles to encourage people to adopt and maintain beneficial behaviours and attitudes. In this paper we investigate the influence of Cialdini’s seven persuasive principles on people’s choices, actions and behaviour. In contrast to related work investigating perceived persusaion, this study analyses actual persuasion. We also investigate the impact of personality, age and gender on people’s susceptibility to different message types. Furthermore, we investigate if people’s susceptibility to different persuasive messages is consistent over time. The findings suggest that certain persuasive principles have a greater influence on a person’s actions than others, with Reciprocity and Liking being the most effective. Our results differ from work investigating perceived persuasiveness, suggesting that what people perceive to be more persuasive is not necessarily what will persuade them to perform an action. Moreover, the study showed that people’s susceptibility to different principles is dependent on their personality traits, and it remains constant with time. The findings from this study have implications for future work on personalising persuasive strategies and designing digital behaviour change interventions.

Persuasive technology (PT) has been shown to be effective at motivating people to accomplish their behaviour goals in different areas, especially health. It can support students to improve their learning by increasing their motivation to engage deeply with their educational resources. Research on the use of persuasive systems to improve students’ motivation to learn is still scarce. Thus, in this research, we examined whether three socially-oriented influence strategies (upward social comparison, social learning, and competition), implemented in a persuasive system, can motivate students to engage more in learning activities. Research has shown that the strategies can motivate people for attitude- or behaviour-change when employed in PT design. The strategies were operationalized in a persuasive system as three versions of visualization using students’ assessment grades. The persuasive system was applied in a real university setting to determine whether it can encourage students to improve their learning activities in an introductory biology class. Three groups of students used the persuasive system versions, each group used one version. Among the groups, some students received a version of the persuasive system, tailored to their personal preference to the corresponding influence strategy. The results of this research analysis show that tailoring the persuasive system versions to students’ strategy preference increases its effectiveness. Moreover, the results reveal that the three social influence strategies can be employed in educational software to influence students to achieve a positive goal in their learning.

The current study is based on the assumption that social topology and its interaction pattern affect users’ behavioral changes, especially continuity. To verify the hypothesis, several metrics have been introduced, and experiments have been conducted, resulting in interesting and quantitative findings. In the experiments, two conditional differences lead to statistic significance in continuity and other metrics; the first difference is the existence of feedback implementation, another one is information visibility. It has been experimentally confirmed that users who received more feedback from system bots (i.e., they did not know that they were controlled until the experiment ended) tend to also send more feedback themselves. Moreover, it has been found that only the fact that the others (i.e., bots), except the participant, sent feedback to each other made the person feel isolated, and the participant sent feedback him/herself to avoid being depressed with no interaction. On the other hand, information visibility had little effect on their continuity and no effect on their consciousness.

We present an exploratory field study to investigate the acceptability of a group intervention to promote physical activity. To this end, a five-week group coaching program was developed, as well as the technological infrastructure to deliver this program. People participated in teams, consisting of hospital staff working together in a ward or department. Two teams of nurses and one team of facility support staff participated in the study. The program contained two consecutive team challenges; aimed at increasing daily step count and daily stairs taken. Participants wore a FitBit One activity tracker to measure steps and stairs. Personal information was delivered via a smart phone app, while aggregated team information was shown on a large screen placed in a common room at the ward. At the end of the study, group interviews were held to elicit feedback on the acceptability of the concept and experience of the coaching program. Participants were enthusiastic about the concept. They indicated that the group coaching caused bonding and improved team cohesion. There was a clear need to communicate within the team (now solved through WhatsApp groups). Furthermore, they would have liked an element of competition between teams. Overall, the results were positive, leading to the conclusion that team coaching at the workplace is a promising strategy to promote physical activity.

The motivational impact of gamification elements differs substantially across users. To account for these differences, we investigate Hexad user types and behavior change intentions as factors to personalize gamifed, persuasive fitness systems. We conducted an online study (N = 179), measuring the perceived persuasiveness of twelve gamification elements using storyboards. Results show the applicability of the Hexad user type in the Physical Activity domain. Besides replicating correlations between gamification elements and user types, we also found correlations which were hypothesized in literature, but not yet shown. Our main contribution is to show that behavior change intentions influence the perception of gamification elements in general and affect the set of relevant elements for each user type. Since a static set of elements has been suggested for each user type so far, this is an important finding, leading to potentially more effective personalization approaches.

The persuasiveness of a narrative is increased by the audience’s engagement with it, which in turn depends on the extent to which its needs and goals are served by the narrative. This study considers whether indulging the audience’s prejudice might be a way to serve their needs and increase engagement. Two different versions of a news videoclip, one neutral and one prejudiced, were displayed in a between-participants design (N = 44). The participants’ familiarity with the topic and prejudice against it were measured, and their effect on the engagement with the two types of video was tested. The analysis shows an indifference for biased content, equally engaging than nonbiased; they also show an effect of familiarity. These first results are relevant to the current debate about biased news and the potential manipulative role of personalized content recommendations.

This paper addresses the possibility to build on the success of digital development in order to design messages that will be seen by individuals as being the most relevant to the object being addressed. By studying the social representations status as well as ergonomic features of interfaces like the information elements’ location and the color of background, we tried to determine whether persuasive technology can be a particularly effective medium to achieve favorable attitudes and behaviors towards organ donation. We recorded participants’ ocular activity and administered them a self-reported measures questionnaire. Results show several significant effects, particularly on attitudes, intentions and behaviors. We demonstrate that to increase the persuasive impact of a message, it is better to mobilize central elements of the social representations of the object being treated and to place these elements in the middle of the screen. The blue background screen did not show the expected effects. However, regarding to the interaction between social representations’ status and background’s color, it seems that white is more appropriate than blue for technological persuasion. In the end, this research contributes to propose optimization tracks for public communication though technologies, for example in fields of health, commerce, education, environment, professional efficiency or social media marketing.