Learning to Stop Smoking: Understanding Persuasive Applications’ Long-Term Behavior Change Effectiveness Through User Achievement Motivation

• Published in: Persuasive Technology. Designing for Future Change pp. 139 - 149
• Main Authors: Ham, Jaap, Langrial, Sitwat Usman
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2020
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Achievement orientation; Behavior change; Health; Persuasive technology; Smoking cessation
• ISBN: 9783030457112; 3030457117
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-45712-9_11

Compromising smoking cessation applications’ effectiveness, many users relapse. We propose that long-term adoption of persuasive technology is (partly) dependent on users’ motivational orientation. Therefore, we studied the potential relationship between user’s achievement motivation and the long-term behavior change effectiveness of persuasive technology. One-hundred users of a smoking cessation app filled out a questionnaire assessing their motivational orientation and (long-term) behavior change rates. Based on research findings, we expected that participants with stronger learning goal orientation (who are focused on self-improvement and persistent when facing failure) would report a higher long-term behavior change success rate. In contrast, we expected that participants with a stronger performance goal orientation (focused on winning, for whom solitary failures can undermine intrinsic motivation) would report lower long-term success. Results confirmed our hypotheses. This research broadens our understanding of how persuasive applications’ effectiveness relates to user achievement motivation.