Investigation of personalizing persuasive system design model in fitness apps to reduce prolonged sitting behavior among the elderly: A qualitative experiment

The advancement in technologies for transportation, communication, workplace environment, and entertainment has changed the physical, economic, and social environment all around the globe and is still evolving rapidly. Due to these technologically advanced environments, the prevalence of sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity has increased and caused countless non-communicable diseases. The mobile health and fitness applications aiming at sedentary behavior change and increasing physical activity levels are becoming increasingly popular. However, the major user group of such applications is less than 60 years old. On the other hand, the Elderly are the main affected group of this emerging risk to health, which has become the leading cause of mortality among the elderly. This study addressed how can the personalization of the Persuasive System Design (PSD) model in mobile health and fitness applications assist elders in reducing prolonged sitting behavior. A qualitative experiment designed to investigate the perceived inspiration, usefulness, and effectiveness of personalized PSD categories. The interaction effect between personalization and PSD categories for perceived effectiveness was moderate (p = .012), while for perceived usefulness and perceived inspiration was not significant, (p = .073) and (p = .337) respectively. All assumptions for the parametric statistical test were not met; there were outliers in each group. However, the elderly liked to have simplified and personalized system features, which would make the application learning process fast and easy for them. Further, they preferred to receive promotive and encouraging messages (content) over preventive messages. The qualitative results indicated that adopting new behavior is easier for the elderly instead of changing the existing one