The Influence of Culture in the Effect of Age and Gender on Social Influence in Persuasive Technology Kiemute Oyibo University of Saskatchewan S7N 5C9, Saskatoon, Canada kiemute.oyibo@usask.ca Rita Orji University of Waterloo N2L 3G1, Waterloo, Canada rita.orji@uwaterloo.ca Julita Vassileva University of Saskatchewan S7N 5C9, Saskatoon, Canada jiv@cs.usask.ca ABSTRACT Research has shown that social influence can be used to effect be- havior change. However, research on the role culture plays in the effect of age and gender on social influence in persuasive technol- ogy is scarce. To address this, we investigate the effect of age and gender on the susceptibility of individuals to Competition, Re- ward, Social Comparison and Social Learning in individualist and collectivist cultures, using a sample of 360 participants from North America, Africa and Asia. Our results reveal that there are more significant differences between males and females and between younger and older people in collectivist cultures than individualist cultures. In individualist culture, we found that males and females differ with respect to Competition only, with males being more susceptible. However, in collectivist culture, we found males differ from females with respect to Reward and Competition, with males being more susceptible, while younger people differ from older people with respect to Competition, Social Comparison and Social Learning, with younger people be more susceptible. Our findings provide designers of gamified persuasive applications with empir- ical insights, including a number of guidelines, for tailoring to the individualist and collectivist cultures based on age and gender. KEYWORDS Persuasive strategies; gamification; social influence; competition; social comparison; social learning; reward; culture; age; gender ACM Reference format: K. Oyibo, R. Orji, and J. Vassileva. 2017. The Influence of Culture in the Effect of Age and Gender on Social Influence in Persuasive Technology. In Proceedings of ACM UMAP conference, Bratislava, Slovakia, July 2017 (UMAP’17), 6 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3099023.3099071 1 INTRODUCTION Research has shown that persuasive technology, focused on changing behaviors, will be more effective if personalized for the target audience [8]. In recent years, in persuasive technology re- search, social influence has been found to be a powerful means of motivating individuals to perform behaviors, which are not only beneficial to them, but to the entire society [3]. Among social in- fluence strategies, which have been found to be very effective in motivating individuals in a gamified context, include Reward and Competition [5]. Other social influence strategies include Social Comparison, Social Learning (aka Social Proof), Cooperation, So- cial Recognition, etc. [11], [2]. While there have been a number of studies [16], [13], [14], which focused on the effectiveness of these social influence strategies and the influence of age and gen- der, studies investigating the role culture plays in the level of sus- ceptibility of individuals or groups of individuals are scarce. To advance knowledge in persuasive technology research, we set out to investigate how males and females, on one hand, and younger and older people, on the other hand, differ in their sus- ceptibility to social influence by considering culture. Specifically, we investigated how the individualist culture differs from the col- lectivist culture. An individualist culture is one in which individ- uals pursues personal as opposed to collective goals and aspira- tions; thus, individuals in this culture are independent, self-moti- vated and self-reliant, e.g., United States, Canada, etc. On the hand, a collectivist culture is one in which its members are con- cerned with goals and aspirations of the in-group to which they belong as opposed to self, e.g., China, Nigeria, etc. [6], [7]. Using a sample size of 360 participants from North America, Africa and Asia, we investigated how males and females as well as younger and older people differ in individualist and collectivist cultures with respect to their level of susceptibility to Reward, Competi- tion, Social Comparison and Social Learning. Our results reveal that: 1) in individualist culture, younger and older people do not differ, while males and females only differ with respect to Competition, with males being more persuadable; and 2) in collectivist culture, males are more persuadable by Re- ward and Competition than females, while younger people are more persuadable by Competition, Social Comparison and Social Learning than older people. Our findings offer designers of gami- fied persuasive technology useful guidelines for tailoring to indi- vidualist and collectivist cultures based on age and gender. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distrib- uted for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. UMAP'17 Adjunct, July 09-12, 2017, Bratislava, Slovakia © 2017 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5067-9/17/07…$15.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3099023.3099071