團隊

Many mobile applications use push notifications and reminders to explicitly educate, remind, and motivate users to perform healthy behaviors. However, users do not always act according to these explicit digital interventions. Our study investigates whether users’ self-regulation can be implicitly facilitated with a proper mobile interaction design. Specifically, we investigate the impacts of two touch modes that are supported by force-based interaction technology, that is, pressing and tapping. Drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, which suggests that people automatically infer meanings from their bodily actions, we conjecture that pressing, compared with tapping, enhances self-regulation because the action of pressing on the touchscreen embodies resolute approach motivation toward goals. We test our hypotheses in three experiments. The first experiment investigates beverage choices on a mobile app; the second experiment examines goal setting on a fitness app; and the third experiment focuses on personal hygiene learning on a mobile education app. The results from the three experiments show that pressing actions can improve users’ self-regulation in selecting a healthier but less tasty beverage (Study 1), setting higher exercise goals and performing more physical exercise (Study 2), and reducing lapses in maintaining personal hygiene (Study 3). In addition, such effects were more salient among users with a higher level of health knowledge and a promotion-focused health orientation. This study contributes to healthcare IT research by showing that mobile interaction can be leveraged to nudge users toward enhanced self-regulation.

人們的生活作息規律是由生理時鐘和社交時鐘共同構建而成。不過，人們的社交時鐘經常偏離生理時鐘（例如：為了工作或學習，比睡到自然醒早起；為了夜班工作或趕上項目完成期限而熬夜）— 此現象被稱為「社交時差」。社交時差如何影響消費者行為？研究的工作數據和實驗結果顯示，由於處於社交時差的消費者往往對社交互動不太感興趣，因此社交時差會減少炫耀性的消費行為。然而，此效應在以下情況會有所減弱：當消費者與熟悉的人而非陌生人進行社交互動；當他們的炫耀性消費行為不會引起社交圈子的關注；以及當他們傾向於私人場合中使用奢侈品。