Persuasive system based mHealth design for multi-intervention service for smoking cessation

Abstract

Mobile phones, especially smartphones, are increasingly receiving attention from public health scholars for delivery of healthcare services for lifestyle diseases like diabetes and smoking because of their ease of access, low cost and ubiquity. Through literature review, significant gaps regarding acceptance studies for use of mobile phones for health behavior change were identified. These gaps include the following: all studies on mobile interventions for smoking cessation have been SMS/MMS/Call based; none of the studies include System Framework/Design component for developing behavior change services; lack of studies on multi-intervention services for behavior change using Smartphones; none of the studies have explored user acceptance of mobile based smoking cessation services. The current research has been carried out to address some of these gaps while exploring the broad research questions: a) How to develop a Persuasive Technology framework and thereby design a Smartphone based multi-intervention mobile phone (mhealth) service for behavior change (in this case, smoking cessation) using the framework? b) What are the factors affecting the user acceptance of a Smartphone based multi intervention service for disease prevention through behavior change like smoking cessation? To answer the first question, Hevner's framework for design science research and Persuasive System Model has been used for developing and designing a Smartphone based multi-intervention service for smoking cessation. For the second question, the Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model has been applied for exploring factors like performance expectancy (users' belief that service will improve the process of quitting smoking), effort expectancy (the degree of ease of use), social influence (if others believe they should use the service) and facilitating conditions (the degree of users' belief that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support system use) affecting the acceptance of a Smartphone based multi-intervention service for smoking cessation. The results show that the above mentioned factors have significant influence on behavior intention of user, leading to acceptance of mobile based smoking cessation service. These insights therefore need to be incorporated while designing effective mHealth services. Theoretical and practical relevance of these findings have accordingly been analysed and presented in the current research.