Smartwatch-Based Persuasive Design with Tailored Competition and Cooperation Strategies for Promoting Physical Activity

Persuasive technology has gained popularity in mobile sports applications as a design approach aiming to change healthy-related attitudes and behaviors among users. While researchers have proposed persuasion principles for designing and evaluating Persuasive System Development (PSD), mixed results have been found regarding their effects. One important reason for the discrepancies is related to the “one-size-fits-all” approaches adopted in most of such persuasive applications, which did not consider individual differences and therefore yielded ineffective results. Meanwhile, smartwatch, as a wearable device with health monitoring functions, offers a unique opportunity for persuasive design in the area of promoting physical activity. The current study examined social support, one of the major persuasive strategies that can be implemented on smartwatches, with a focus on social features of competition and cooperation. Our results showed that only the perceived persuasiveness of intergroup competition, which combines competition and cooperation, was significantly higher than that of the individual strategy, whereas competition or cooperation alone was not necessarily more effective. On the other hand, the competitive personality tendency significantly affected participants’ perceived persuasiveness of competition. In other words, the more competitive as people, the more likely they were to be persuaded by the competition strategy. Therefore, tailored strategies were needed for suiting needs of different users when developing persuasive technology in the physical activity domain.