Preferred Gamification Elements in a Health Behavior Change Support System for Stress Management

Title data

Berger, Michelle ; Lahmer, Stefanie ; Reuther, Melina ; Schoch, Manfred:
Preferred Gamification Elements in a Health Behavior Change Support System for Stress Management.
In: Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). - Maui, USA , 2023

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Abstract in another language

Stress is a serious hazard to individual health and a great public health concern. Digital technologies, such as health behavior change support systems (HBCSSs), may prove helpful in this regard by helping individuals in voluntarily modifying their behaviors associated to a healthy lifestyle. Previous studies have shown that the success of HBCSSs for stress management depends on the users’ adoption and long-term use of these technologies. Gamification elements (GEs) can contribute to such continuous use and thus enable healthy stress coping behavior. With a mixed methods approach, we identify suitable GEs in the realm of stress management through interviews with users of a mobile coping assistant prototype. Based on those insights, we design GE mockups and conduct a survey using the best-worst-scaling (BWS) method to examine the users’ preferences in this context. The results demonstrate that users mostly prefer feedback elements, such as scoreboard and progress bar in a HBCSSs for stress management. Communication and agent clearly score worst, indicating that these GEs are not preferred by users. Our interviews indicate that this could be due to privacy reasons.