Promoting Contextually Cued Physical Activity Habits: A Pilot Study Using Cue-Contingent Financial Incentives for Daily Walking
Overview
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Exercise
- Sponsor
- Arizona State University
- Enrollment
- 137
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Daily Step Count
- Status
- Completed
- Last Updated
- 2 years ago
Overview
Brief Summary
The primary goal of this two-month pilot study is to measure the behavioral change induced by targeted habit formation reminders that are surfaced via an iPhone app and financial incentives that were offered conditional on using a personalized contextual cue for a daily walking habit. The data and user feedback collected during this study will also be used to optimize the design and content of the iPhone app, which will be tested in future, larger scale experimental research.
Detailed Description
Subjects for this research are recruited on campus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the State University of New York at Albany, and their participation was incentivized. After meeting the eligibility criterion (including have at least some intrinsic motivation for increasing physical activity), downloading the project's iPhone app, and signing the project consent form, all participants will have their step count data recorded for an 8-week study period. Existing interventions that have successfully improved study participants' health-related behaviors typically find that behavioral changes do not persist beyond 3 months after the intervention period. Fortunately, novel habit formation interventions from the psychology literature offer the potential for building long-term behavioral change and avoiding the common "relapse triangles" observed in these existing behavioral interventions. These new methods are based on the theory that habits are formed through the repetition of the same behavior in response to a stable, environmental cue. After an initial period of repetition, automaticity is formed, and the behavioral response becomes more effortlessly/unconsciously induced by the environmental cue. Behavioral reminders that reinforce a specific behavioral routine-environmental cue pair have been shown to support this initial period of habit formation; however, given the individualized nature of these reminders, a generalizable intervention method has not been developed and empirically tested. This research will use an iPhone app to examine the role of both general informational on contextually cued habits and the use of personalized reminders and financial incentives for using a daily physical activity contextual cue on the persistence of physical activity behavior after the intervention tools are withdrawn.
Investigators
Chad Stecher@asu.edu
Assistant Professor
Arizona State University
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria
- •18+ years of age
- •Have an existing wellness goal related to increasing physical activity
- •Access to an iPhone with iOS 10 or above (in order to use the app)
- •Proficiency in speaking and reading English
Exclusion Criteria
- •Have a major visual impairment
- •Pregnancy
- •Expected surgery
- •A chronic or acute health condition that affects their ability to perform basic mobility tasks or light-aerobic exercise (e.g. heart disease, injured or missing limb, etc.)
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Daily Step Count
Time Frame: 4 weeks
Follow-up period
Secondary Outcomes
- Habitual daily walking(4 weeks)
- 10,000 daily step(4 weeks)