Investigation of the moderating effect of race-based personalization of behavior model design in fitness application

Abstract

Persuasive technologies are more likely to be successful if personalized to the target audience. However, in the context of exercise behavior modeling in fitness applications, there is limited research on the moderating effect of personalization based on the race characteristic of the user. To bridge this gap, we carried out an empirical study (n = 669) to examine how race-based personalization moderates the relationships between the perceived persuasiveness of behavior model design and three key social-cognitive determinants of behavior: outcome expectations, self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulation beliefs. We based our investigation on user evaluation of bodyweight-exercise behavior models (videos) featured in a fitness app prototype based on all four constructs. Our results showed that, in both tailored and untailored contexts, behavior models (i.e., their perceived persuasiveness) have a significant influence on both black/brown and white users’ outcome expectations and self-regulation beliefs. However, they are more likely to be effective in influencing black/brown observers than white observers in the respective contexts. Moreover, black/brown models are more likely to have a significant influence on users’ self-efficacy beliefs than white models. Specifically, it is only when the black/brown models are tailored to black/brown observers and contra-tailored to white observers that the perceived persuasiveness of behavior model design has a significant effect on self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, among black/brown observers, our results indicate that behavior model designs are more likely to be effective when tailored than when contra-tailored or untailored, but this is hardly the case among white users. Our study contributes to the body of knowledge by being one of the first to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of race-based personalization of exercise behavior models in the domain of persuasive technologies aimed at motivating behavior change.