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Left: Regularly sent email updates: Notifications, comparison chart and leaderboard. Right: Explanation of the point scheme and achievable levels within the Frequent Biking Challenge.
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This paper explores three persuasive strategies and their capacity to encourage biking as a low-energy mode of transportation. The strategies were designed based on: (I) triggering messages that harness social influence to facilitate more frequent biking, (II) a virtual bike tutorial to increase biker's self-efficacy for urban biking, and (III) an...
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... Participants received emails ( Fig. 1) between 3 to 5 times a week, pro- viding them with information about their performance in the challenge and acting as a trigger for biking [8]. Emails were chosen as they are likely to be regularly read as opposed to a webpage or a mobile app providing the same information. They were sent in the evening to influence mobility planning ...
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... Wunsch and colleagues (2015) implemented persuasive strategies in order to encourage biking as low-energy mode of transportation by utilizing recognition (awards based on the number of bike rides), competition (email updates with a leaderboard), cooperation (collective goals), and social comparison (options to compare the number of bike rides with others). They observed an increase in bike sharing for participants receiving the intervention as compared to the control group (Wunsch et al., 2015). ...
At a time, in which people are more and more suffering from lifestyle-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, or obesity, changing health behavior and preserving a healthy lifestyle are salient factors of any public health effort. Hence, research on predictors and pathways of health behavior change is increasingly important. Following this, new ways of implementing behavior change interventions become possible based on internet technologies, allowing for technological approaches to foster behavior change. Such union of media informatics and psychology is denoted as persuasive design and refers to all technological intervention components, which help people to take, regularly use and re-take (after relapses into unwanted behavior) interventions. Along this trend, the present chapter introduces (1) theories of health behavior change and summarizes (2) present persuasive design approaches, thereby ending with (3) future directions in the field.KeywordsPersuasive designHealth behavior changee-healthLifestyle interventions
... M. Berger et al. in the energy context analyzed it in a physical environment (Abrahamse et al., 2007;Emeakaroha et al., 2014;Dahlinger et al., 2018a;Degirmenci and Recker, 2018) with varying results regarding the effectiveness of the DNE intervention. These DNEs were mainly analyzed in the context of energy (Brandsma and Blasch, 2019;Graml et al., 2011;Grønhøj and Thøgersen, 2011;Schultz et al., 2015), water (Brent et al., 2015;Tiefenbeck et al., 2018Tiefenbeck et al., , 2019 and mobility (Dahlinger et al., 2018a(Dahlinger et al., , 2018bWunsch et al., 2015). Only Lembcke et al. (2019) analyzed the effectiveness of feedback in the context of food. ...
The ongoing environmental deterioration is mainly human-induced. In various daily contexts, individuals can make small choices in favor of environmentally sustainable behavior to counteract this effect. With ever-increasing digitalization, these decisions are shifted toward a digital world. Digital nudging presents a promising approach to foster environmentally sustainable behavior without restricting the freedom of choice. However, research on digital nudging appears to be highly fragmented, leaving information systems designers without guidance on which nudging elements to choose in a specific context. By conducting a structured literature review followed by a framework development, this paper provides an information systems design perspective that matches digital nudging elements on context decision types and indicates the effectiveness of their combination. Thus, the provided framework is of practical use for designing effective digital nudging elements. Moreover, it contributes to research by identifying meta-inferences of the current status quo and offering impulses for future research.
... Hence, more research is needed into how the design of environments can be made more "self-explaining" to support orientation and safe navigating, and how orientation aids can be designed to be as intuitive as possible (Graser 2017). On the other hand, research is also needed into the ways of raising the self-efficacy of social groups experiencing such barriers (Wunsch et al., 2015). ...
Walking is widely promoted as a healthy and sustainable way to get around. Still, although the benefits of walking are undisputed, it is equally known that most people walk much less than they could and should do. This article explores this discrepancy from the angle of human behaviour change processes and applies a theoretically grounded systematics for identifying the most important barriers against walking. This is followed by a description of behaviour types and related behaviour change motives to inspire strategies and arguments to address different types of target groups. The proposed framework can support the selection of measures and strategies to increase walking in different environments and addressing specific social groups.
... , frequency (average of daily frequency), overall slope, and period-separated slopes with daily frequency of EMA responses (the bar colored in black). For period-separated slopes, three periods are given: week #1-#6 (day 0-41), week #6-#8 (day [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], and week #8-#10 (day 56-67). Note that overall slope is introduced from daily frequency, and that period-separated slopes are calculated from daily frequency per week. ...
... Some of the early explorations concerning SMAs such as Sprout I/O [16], HapticClench [29], and Tickler [43] exhibit insights about using SMAs in the research domain. Nakao et al. proposed Share-Haptics [55], an SMA-based haptic system that allowed multiple remote participants to share haptic sensations via the hands and feet depending on the application. Recently, Springlets [31] explored six expressive sensations on the skin using a single flexible sticker based on SMA springs. ...
... In a recent review, Klecha and Gianni [22] outline commonly used approaches: Supporting eco-friendly choices such as cycling is done with information and guidance using journey planning services [21,25,40]. Game-like designs are used in "sustainability challenges", as well as rewards, that usually are virtual points [6,14,51,55]. Social influence and social comparison are used and instantiated e.g. with leader boards [13,21,25,51,54]. Another approach is self-monitoring, often enabled through graphical, statistical representations of reported or logged mobility behaviour [6,14,40,51,55]. ...
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders diagnosed in children, for which Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) represents the main standard treatment used worldwide, despite its pedantic approach negatively affects both patients’ engagement and improvement. In this work we aim to renovate ADHD treatment with a new approach for cognitive, behavioral, and emotional patient rehabilitation. Iamhero is a first prototype of hi-tech multisensorial therapeutic environment, that bases its strength on patients physical and emotional engagement, leading therefore to cognitive and behavioral skills improvement. The first results show encouraging improvement in learning skills in patients that have steadily used the system for six months. In this paper we explain Iamhero main features, and the first experimental results obtained.
... , frequency (average of daily frequency), overall slope, and period-separated slopes with daily frequency of EMA responses (the bar colored in black). For period-separated slopes, three periods are given: week #1-#6 (day 0-41), week #6-#8 (day [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], and week #8-#10 (day 56-67). Note that overall slope is introduced from daily frequency, and that period-separated slopes are calculated from daily frequency per week. ...
... Some of the early explorations concerning SMAs such as Sprout I/O [16], HapticClench [29], and Tickler [43] exhibit insights about using SMAs in the research domain. Nakao et al. proposed Share-Haptics [55], an SMA-based haptic system that allowed multiple remote participants to share haptic sensations via the hands and feet depending on the application. Recently, Springlets [31] explored six expressive sensations on the skin using a single flexible sticker based on SMA springs. ...
... In a recent review, Klecha and Gianni [22] outline commonly used approaches: Supporting eco-friendly choices such as cycling is done with information and guidance using journey planning services [21,25,40]. Game-like designs are used in "sustainability challenges", as well as rewards, that usually are virtual points [6,14,51,55]. Social influence and social comparison are used and instantiated e.g. with leader boards [13,21,25,51,54]. Another approach is self-monitoring, often enabled through graphical, statistical representations of reported or logged mobility behaviour [6,14,40,51,55]. ...
Healthy Ageing represents one of the most crucial topics that our society will face in the next decades, due to the progressive demographic ageing of the population, (e.g., in Italy old-age dependency ratio is estimated to reach 59,7% by 2065). These statistics highlights the need of a new paradigm for active and healthy ageing, as well as a healthcare system able to support elderly population in age-related diseases management. In this work we present Let’s dance, an innovative exergame that aims to provide a new way to deliver physiotherapy for mild or moderate Parkinson’s disease patients. Within the game, the patients are asked to reproduce the choreography proposed, whose dance moves are aimed toward the achievement of specific therapeutic goals (e.g., optimize motor coordination, physical endurance, etc.). The game is part of a broader integrated platform that through sensors and actuators located on a robot device in the clinical environment and on patients themselves, can track in real-time both the game performance and the clinical KPIs and determine the assessment of patient’s therapeutic progress. In this paper we present the first prototype of Let’s dance and a use-case scenario.
... The consumer can make an easier evaluation and can be provided an orientation for the planning of similar future actions (Keller et al. 2020). Examples include the distance friends commuted by bike (Wunsch et al. 2015) or the number of public transportation trips traveled by colleagues (Lieberoth et al. 2018). Comparing own behavior to that of others can have a strong influence on personal behavior and, therefore, can have a positive impact (Blumenthal-Barby and Burroughs 2012). ...
... Overall, digital nudging using social comparison has led to mixed effects in previous studies. Whereas there have been significant effects in water and energy savings, as well as an increase in bike commuting (Ferraro and Price 2013;Grønhøj and Thøgersen 2011;Wunsch et al. 2015), there is also evidence that initial effects cannot be sustained beyond the experimental phase ( ...
Over recent years, attention to the urgency of climate change and creating a more sustainable future has risen significantly. However, many people still have not changed their behavior and gone greener even though they know about the severe consequences. Green information systems (IS) provides a promising research agenda to tackle environmental problems with IT-enabled solutions. Digital nudges can be an especially effective instrument in inducing behavior changes. However, due to the interdisciplinary nature of digital nudging, the concept disperses into different research fields. To structure the existing knowledge, we conducted a literature review including 43 research articles. Our research organizes and analyses the extant work on digital nudges toward pro-environmental behavior. The results show that the effects of digital nudges depend on their moment of application. Based on our results, we derive directions for future research of digital nudging in IS research.
... Implemented in a form of smartphone application and tested by 24 participants over a period of eight weeks, the approach resulted in users' good acceptance, increased awareness of environmental impacts, and instances of behavioral change [10]. Moreover, Wunsch et al. [11] explored the implementation of persuasive technology using three strategies to encourage biking as a low-energy transportation mode. While the first strategy (frequent biking challenge) showed a considerable increase in bike use, the other two (virtual bike tutorial and bike buddy program) remained inconclusive whether they could increase users' intention to bike. ...
The poor air quality of Jakarta, caused among others by fossil fuel combustion for transportation, harmfully affects the health of its people. Carbon emissions resulting from transportation activities can be reduced by getting people to use public transportation more frequently. This research aims at designing a persuasive application to encourage people to use public transportation more often. The steps of interaction design were employed. Firstly, user needs were identified using interviews, resulting in 48 interpreted needs which were then grouped into nine primary needs. Secondly, a design workshop involving users and designers was conducted to produce three concept alternatives. In the next stage, the best concept was selected using the concept scoring method and was subsequently refined through the SCAMPER method. A high-fidelity prototype was developed based on the final concept. Lastly, the evaluation process of the application prototype named ecoGlide consisted of two major parts, i.e. the evaluation of performance and persuasive qualities. The performance evaluation was conducted through Usability Testing using five criteria. The effectiveness and efficiency criteria consecutively score 91% and 71.43%, exceeding the minimum acceptable value of 70%. Furthermore, the satisfaction, usefulness, and learnability criteria respectively score 3.83, 3.88, and 3.88, which surpass the threshold value of 3.4. The persuasive quality was evaluated using the qualitative method through a coding scheme. The result shows that the Emotion and Persuasion categories were most closely related to the application use. The most influential sub-category of the persuasion aspect is Reward Driven, which ranks 4th out of 14 sub-categories. Overall, the ecoGlide application was considered to have good usability and persuasive ability.
... The studies reporting on a manipulation check included comprehension questions to assess if participants could identify the depicted strategy (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Orji, 2017) and some pre-user test to assess whether users could recall the message content that included the social comparison aspect used as part of the experiment (Harper et al., 2007). The direction of social comparison was in most studies not reported on or part of the control mechanisms (Busch et al., 2016;Filonik et al., 2013;Gunaratne and Nov, 2015;Hasan et al., 2013;Kamal and Fels, 2012;Orji, 2017;Ruer et al., 2016;Stibe and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2014;Wunsch et al., 2015). Four studies used upward comparison (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Orji et al., 2019;Orji, 2017;Wunsch et al., 2015) and one study used all three comparison directions of upward, downward and lateral (Harper et al., 2007). ...
... The direction of social comparison was in most studies not reported on or part of the control mechanisms (Busch et al., 2016;Filonik et al., 2013;Gunaratne and Nov, 2015;Hasan et al., 2013;Kamal and Fels, 2012;Orji, 2017;Ruer et al., 2016;Stibe and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2014;Wunsch et al., 2015). Four studies used upward comparison (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Orji et al., 2019;Orji, 2017;Wunsch et al., 2015) and one study used all three comparison directions of upward, downward and lateral (Harper et al., 2007). Five of the twelve studies did not combine the social comparison strategy with other strategies within the same condition (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Gunaratne and Nov, 2015;Harper et al., 2007;Orji et al., 2019;Orji, 2017), while the other seven did combine them with one or more other strategies (Busch et al., 2016;Filonik et al., 2013;Hasan et al., 2013;Kamal and Fels, 2012;Ruer et al., 2016;Stibe and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2014;Wunsch et al., 2015). ...
... Four studies used upward comparison (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Orji et al., 2019;Orji, 2017;Wunsch et al., 2015) and one study used all three comparison directions of upward, downward and lateral (Harper et al., 2007). Five of the twelve studies did not combine the social comparison strategy with other strategies within the same condition (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Gunaratne and Nov, 2015;Harper et al., 2007;Orji et al., 2019;Orji, 2017), while the other seven did combine them with one or more other strategies (Busch et al., 2016;Filonik et al., 2013;Hasan et al., 2013;Kamal and Fels, 2012;Ruer et al., 2016;Stibe and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2014;Wunsch et al., 2015). The target of the social comparison strategy included a group of people (Busch et al., 2016;Gunaratne and Nov, 2015;Harper et al., 2007;Hasan et al., 2013;Ruer et al., 2016); as well as specific and identifiable users (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2017;Filonik et al., 2013;Kamal and Fels, 2012;Orji, 2017;Stibe and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2014); non-identifiable users (Wunsch et al., 2015); potentially identifiable specific users (Orji et al., 2019); and users with a personal connection to the participant (Kamal and Fels, 2012;Orji, 2017). ...
Theories from psychology or the social sciences are commonly used as a starting point when designing persuasive technologies that aim to evoke a specific behavior change. Ideally, using these theories would (1) help guide the design of the persuasive technology and (2) help evaluate and inform the theory. In this paper, we focused on the first aspect and looked at how papers report on how a theory guided the design of persuasive technology. We performed a scoping review focused on the operationalization of social comparison theory as part of persuasive design. We chose social comparison due to its ubiquitous use in persuasive design as well as its potential positive or negative influence on the user. The former requires careful consideration in a persuasive design prototype. We focused on the proceedings of the Persuasive Technology conference from 2006 to 2020 to gain an understanding of the use of social comparison theory as part of persuasive design. Twelve studies met our inclusion criteria. Explanations of how the theory guides design decisions leading to the final operationalization were sparse. We suggest that conducting manipulation checks and using a systematic approach to reporting design decisions including the potential grounding of design elements in theory could highlight and clarify theoretical insights, and could increase our understanding of how social comparison—and behavior change theory in general—could be efficiently operationalized in persuasive technologies.
... Interventions using biking apps are also scarce. Wunsch et al. [6] explored three persuasive strategies (a frequent biking challenge, a virtual bike tutorial, and a bike buddy program), Wunsch et al. [7] tested gamification incorporated in a biking campaign, and Bopp et al. [8] tested a multistrategy intervention using an app alongside a social marketing component and social media campaign. It is worth mentioning that the merits of multi-component interventions are also not entirely warranted. ...
Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with developers of the “Cyclers” smartphone app to improve the effectiveness of the app by evaluating financial and non-financial motivational features. Participants in the experiment were recruited among new users of the app, and were randomly assigned to one of four different motivational treatments (smart gamification, two variants of a financial reward, and a combination of smart gamification and a financial reward) or a control group (no specific motivation). Our analysis suggests that people can be effectively motivated to engage in more frequent commuter cycling with incentives via a smartphone app. Offering small financial rewards seems to be more effective than smart gamification. A combination of both motivational treatments—smart gamification and financial rewards—may work the same or slightly better than financial rewards alone. We demonstrate that small financial rewards embedded in smartphone apps such as “Cyclers” can be effective in nudging people to commute by bike more often.
... Nudging strategies make behavioural alternatives more visible, in the area of physical activity; for example, by making stairs more attractive than a lift (Hollands et al., 2013). Nudging has also been successfully used in the context of active mobility; for example, to promote cycling in cities (Wunsch et al., 2015). The methods used here are similar to the "persuasive technology" principle. ...
In recent decades, a stagnation or even a decline in pedestrian traffic has been observed in many cities, despite the ambitious efforts of national and international action plans, strategies and initiatives. Our project, which is named "Walk Your City", addresses this problem by designing, developing and evaluating an innovative behavioural-based pedestrian initiative, with a focus on "nudging" as the applied method. The overall aim is to decisively raise awareness of walking as an active and health-enhancing activity through behavioural approaches such as nudging. The core of our approach is represented by "nudges", which are triggered via an app as well as offline campaigns. The story refers to a not-so-distant dystopian future where the pilot city of Graz in Austria suffers from pollution and traffic chaos, as well as climate change. Through regular walking, as well as visiting places such as parks or viewpoints, users of the app are rewarded with tokens. Following the idea of crowdsourcing, these tokens can be invested into desired improvements such as parking benches or zebra crossings. Through this unique combination of technological innovation, a fun approach, behavioural concepts and a creative campaign, participants are motivated to explore and experience the city on foot. Walking should be perceived as a genuine and healthy alternative for short distances (<3km), and the first choice when covering small distances (<1km). The nudging approach will be iteratively optimized in terms of acceptance, functionality and usability, using focus groups, internal lab tests and expert workshops. This strategy will ensure a practice-oriented project implementation that is tailored to the needs of the different target groups, such as students, commuters and tourists. The mobility and health data obtained during the pilot test will be used to evaluate the suitability and impact of the nudging approach in an academic paper. As the empirical data show, a behavioural change in terms of a larger share of walking in the modal split, as well a positive impact on the interest and awareness regarding the effects of walking, can be observed.
