Abstract
Self-tracking technologies bring a new set of experiences into our lives. Through sensors and ubiquitous measurements of bodily performance, a new form of automation experience shapes our understanding of our body and our behavior. While for many individuals self-tracking has an important role in their daily lives, a theoretical understanding of the level and behavioral manifestations of commitment to self-tracking is still missing. This paper introduces the concept of commitment to self-tracking and presents the development and first validation of a new 12-item behavior-based scale for its measurement, the Commitment to Self-Tracking (C2ST) scale. Using online survey data from individuals wearing self-tracking technology (N = 300), we explore the underlying factor structure of the scale and determine its reliability and validity. An analysis of the survey data indicates that commitment to self-tracking positively correlates with autonomous motivation for tracking and negatively correlates with controlled motivation. The C2ST scale brings insights on how self-tracking technology, as a novel automation experience, is affecting users’ everyday behaviors. Overall, by emphasizing the feasibility of defining commitment behaviorally, the paper concludes with implications for theory and practice and suggests directions for future research.
Highlights
For many individuals, self-tracking technologies have become an integral part of everyday automation experiences
We argue that commitment to self-tracking manifests itself in users’ everyday activities and social interactions, simultaneously, which encompasses the time, money, and effort which users invest in self-tracking technologies, the variety of ways and contexts in which they use their self-trackers, and the extent to which they share their self-tracking-related material, including the monitored data
Self-tracking technologies introduce novel everyday automation experiences which have the power to transform the ways in which users relate to their own bodies and behaviors
Summary
Self-tracking technologies have become an integral part of everyday automation experiences. Self-tracking technology is becoming an increasingly potent tool in shaping the modern self—our sense of self-awareness, self-efficacy, and self-worth, our sense of our own bodies, our behaviors, our health, and social relations In other words, it is a new form of everyday automation that deeply affects our experience of self. We argue that investigating self-tracking technologies and their experiential effects through the lens of psychology brings a new understanding of the impact of these technologies. This is especially urgent given the fact that despite being a promising tool, self-tracking technologies face a challenge in that they struggle to deliver on what is promised, either implicitly or explicitly. We conclude with implications and possible applications of the scale for future research on self-tracking
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