Agnis Stibe

Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies

People continuously experience various types of engagement through social media, mobile interaction, location-based applications, and other technologically advanced environments. Often, integral parts of such socio-technical contexts often are information systems designed to change behaviors and attitudes of their users by leveraging powers of social influence, further defined as socially influencing systems (SIS). Drawing upon socio-psychological theories, this paper initially reviews and presents a typology of relevant social influence aspects. Following that, it analyzes four partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) based empirical studies to examine the interconnectedness of their social influence aspects. As a result, the analysis provides grounds for seminal steps towards the development and advancement of a framework for designing and evaluating socially influencing systems. The main findings can also deepen understanding of how to effectively harness social influence for enhanced user engagement in socio-technical environments and guide persuasive engineering of future socially influencing systems.

What Makes You Bike? Exploring Persuasive Strategies to Encourage Low-Energy Mobility

This paper explores three persuasive strategies and their capacity to encourage biking as a low-energy mode of transportation. The strategies were designed based on: (I) triggering messages that harness social influence to facilitate more frequent biking, (II) a virtual bike tutorial to increase biker’s self-efficacy for urban biking, and (III) an arranged bike ride to help less experienced bikers overcome initial barriers towards biking. The potential of these strategies was examined based on self-reported trip data from 44 participants over a period of four weeks, questionnaires, and qualitative interviews. Strategy I showed a significant increase of 13.5 percentage points in share of biking during the intervention, strategy II indicated an increase of perceived self-efficacy for non-routine bikers, and strategy III provided participants with a positive experience of urban biking. The explored strategies contribute to further research on the design and implementation of persuasive technologies in the field of mobility.

Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems

Persuasive technologies are commonly engineered to change behavior and attitudes of users through persuasion and social influence without using coercion and deception. While earlier research has been extensively focused on exploring the concept of persuasion, the present theory-refining study aims to explain the role of social influence and its distinctive characteristics in the field of persuasive technology. Based on a list of notable differences, this study outlines how both persuasion and social influence can be best supported through computing systems and introduces a notion of computer-moderated influence, thus extending the influence typology. The novel type of influence tends to be more salient for socially influencing systems, which informs designers to be mindful when engineering such technologies. The study provides sharper conceptual representation of key terms in persuasive engineering, drafts a structured approach for better understanding of the influence typology, and presents how computers can be moderators of social influence.

Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes

Numerous scholars study how to design evidence-based interventions that can improve the lives of individuals, in a way that also brings social benefits. However, within the behavioral sciences in general, and the persuasive technology field specifically, scholars rarely focus-on, or report the negative outcomes of behavior change interventions, and possibly fewer report a special type of negative outcome, a backfire. This paper has been authored to start a wider discussion within the scientific community on intervention backfiring. Within this paper, we provide tools to aid academics in the study of persuasive backfiring, present a taxonomy of backfiring causes, and provide an analytical framework containing the intention-outcome and likelihood-severity matrices. To increase knowledge on how to mitigate the negative impact of intervention backfiring, we discuss research and practitioner implications.

Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing: Quantified Communities

Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about your wellbeing? Future cities will reshape human behavior in countless ways. New strategies and models are required for future urban spaces to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dynamics. Persuasive urban systems will play an important role in making cities more livable and resource-efficient by addressing current environmental challenges and enabling healthier routines. Persuasive cities research aims at improving wellbeing across societies through applications of socio-psychological theories and their integration with conceptually new urban designs. This research presents an ecosystem of future cities, describes three generic groups of people depending on their susceptibility to persuasive technology, explains the process of defining behavior change, and provides tools for social engineering of persuasive cities. Advancing this research is important as it scaffolds scientific knowledge on how to design persuasive cities and refines guidelines for practical applications in achieving their emergence.

Gamification and Social Dynamics: Insights from a Corporate Cycling Campaign

Cycling is an essential transport mode in a well-balanced urban transportation system. While most approaches for achieving an increase from today’s usually low levels of biking are focusing mainly on infrastructure measures and policies, this study presents the effects of the Biking Tourney, a bike commuting challenge between 14 companies aiming at motivating employees to commute by bike. This six-week study involved 239 participants using a socially influencing system for reporting commutes and watching the rankings. The frequency of bike commuting increased for 15 % of overall participants due to their participation. Within the subgroup of occasional bike commuters an even higher share of 30 % commuted by bike more frequently. Further analysis discusses multiple factors contributing to the engagement of employees in the tourney. As the results show the persuasiveness of the intervention, implications for a large-scale implementation are discussed.

Rationale Behind Socially Influencing Design Choices for Health Behavior Change

Persuasive technologies for health behavior change often include social influence features. Social influence in the design of persuasive technology has been described as a black box. This case study sheds light on design practices by identifying factors that affect the design of social influence features in health behavior change applications and the designers’ understanding of the social influence aspects. Our findings are twofold: First, the two most positively inclined social influence features, namely cooperation and normative influence, were missing from the reviewed applications. Second, the medical condition - the persuasive technology targets - has a major influence on consideration and integration of social influence features in health behavior change applications. Our findings should be taken into account when frameworks and guidelines are created for the design of social influence features in health behavior change applications.

Can an Enterprise System Persuade? The Role of Perceived Effectiveness and Social Influence

This study provides an interpretation to empirically explain and predict use continuance intention of students towards an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. A research model based on the information system continuance, the social identity theory, and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology was adopted and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The analysis uncovered important roles that perceived effectiveness and social influence play in explaining the intention of students to continue using the ERP. Further, the model demonstrated how primary task support contributes to perceived effort, which helps in explaining perceived effectiveness of the system. Computer-human dialogue support significantly contributes to perceived credibility, primary task support and perceived social influence. Social identification of the students significantly predicts perceived social influence. Research related to continuous usage of an ERP system is viable, as it enables designers and developers building more persuasive enterprise and socially influencing systems.

Using the elaboration likelihood model to examine online persuasion through website design

Abstract To investigate the dynamics of online persuasion, this research uses the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to determine the effects of argument quality as a central route to influence attitude change versus design and social elements as peripheral routes to attitude change. Additional to this research is an examination of change in issue involvement as a mediator between central and peripheral routes leading to attitude change. Findings from a study involving 403 participants add to our understanding of ELM concerning the role of website design and how an individual’s level of issue involvement is a prerequisite to changing user attitudes.