Persuasive Mobile Apps for Health and Wellness - A Comparative Systematic Review.

While majority of previous research focus on reviewing mobile health (mHealth) apps targeting specific health domain, this paper provides a comparative systematic review of mHealth apps across multiple health domains with the aim of deconstructing the persuasive strategies employed and their implementation. Specifically, we targeted four health domains (i.e., physical activity and fitness, diet, emotional and mental health, and health assessment and healthcare). We retrieved a total of 639 apps from Google Play out of which 80 popular apps were extracted (20 apps in each category). Three expert reviewers coded the apps using 32 persuasive strategies (PS s) based on Persuasive System Design (PSD) Model and Cialdini's Principles of Persuasion. Overall, out of the 80 mHealth apps reviewed, personalization is the most commonly employed PS (n = 77), followed by surface credibility (n = 69), trustworthiness (n = 66) and self-monitoring (n = 64). How the apps are implemented varies depending on the domain. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions for designing mHealth apps to improve their persuasiveness.