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A word of advice: how to tailor motivational text messages based on behavior change theory to personality and gender

de Vries, R.A.J.; Truong, K.P.; Zaga, C.; Li, J.; Evers, V.

Authors

R.A.J. de Vries

K.P. Truong

C. Zaga

V. Evers



Abstract

Developing systems that motivate people to change their behaviors, such as an exercise application for the smartphone, is challenging. One solution is to implement motivational strategies from existing behavior change theory and tailor these strategies to preferences based on personal characteristics, like personality and gender. We operationalized strategies by collecting representative motivational text messages and aligning the messages to ten theory-based behavior change strategies. We conducted an online survey with 350 participants, where the participants rated 50 of our text messages (each aligned to one of the ten strategies) on how motivating they found them. Results show that differences in personality and gender relate to significant differences in the evaluations of nine out of ten strategies. Eight out of ten strategies were perceived as either more or less motivating in relation to scores on the personality traits Openness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness. Four strategies were perceived as more motivating by men than by women. These findings show that personality and gender influence how motivational strategies are perceived. We conclude that our theory-based behavior change strategies can be more motivating by tailoring them to personality and gender of users of behavior change systems.

Citation

de Vries, R., Truong, K., Zaga, C., Li, J., & Evers, V. (2017). A word of advice: how to tailor motivational text messages based on behavior change theory to personality and gender. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 21, 675-687. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-017-1025-1

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Jun 15, 2017
Publication Date 2017-08
Deposit Date May 7, 2024
Journal Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Print ISSN 1617-4909
Electronic ISSN 1617-4917
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 21
Pages 675-687
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-017-1025-1
Keywords Behavior change, Behavior change systems, Transtheoretical model, Processes of change, Tailoring