M. Bang and E.L. Ragnemalm (Eds.): PERSUASIVE 2012, LNCS 7284, pp. 1–12, 2012. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 Determining the Determinants of Health Behaviour Change through an Online Social Network Noreen Kamal and Sidney Fels Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC {noreenk,ssfels}@ece.ubc.ca Abstract. The ABC framework provides determinants for leveraging the moti- vational power of online social networks with the determinants for promoting health behaviour changes. We designed VivoSpace, a medium fidelity proto- type of an online social network to promote healthy behaviour changes based on the guidelines for incorporating these determinants. We evaluated the deter- minants of appeal, belonging and commitment using both direct and indirect methods with 36 adult subjects. Indirect evaluation methods included a helping game experiment, adopted from experimental behavioural economics to meas- ure indirect reciprocity evoked by VivoSpace, which is an important factor in developing belonging. Similarly, an in-group experiment was adopted to eva- luate group commitment. Our results show that VivoSpace’s design based on the ABC framework result in a strong degree of agreement with the appeal de- terminants with evidence for the promotion of belonging and commitment. Thus, we have evidence for the effectiveness of design elements for evoking behaviour change to improve health using an online social network. Keywords. Laboratory experiments, health behaviour change, VivoSpace, ABC framework. 1 Introduction Designing technologies to promote health behaviour change has become an area of interest both in research and for commercial products. Various technologies that pro- mote health behaviour change have been developed and evaluated. These systems include: Houston a mobile phone application that shares step counts with friends [4]; UbiFit a mobile phone application that provides a garden display for one’s exercise performance over time [5,6]; and MAHI a mobile phone application for diabetics that allows entry of experiences and reflection with health educators [14]. This is com- plimented by an increased interest in the use of online social networks for health behaviour change [15], which is not surprising as one’s social networks greatly influ- ence health behaviour [7]. Furthermore, there are numerous applications available commercially to assist users in leading healthy lifestyles. These commercial applica- tions are available in many modalities including: online applications 1 , online social 1 Examples include SparkPeople (www.sparkpeople.com) & DailyBurn (www.dailyburn.com).