Enhancing engagement in digital physical activity interventions: a test of the effectiveness of online social interaction and gamification

Healthy adults aged 18 to 64 should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity (PA) per week. In Flanders, a significant proportion of the population fails to meet this requirement. This puts a significant proportion of the population at risk of lifestyle related health
conditions. Interventions targeting sedentary behavior attempt to incite people to be more physically active and increasingly, digital behavior change interventions (DBCI) are used. Too often though, a lack of engagement of with the intervention is observed, resulting in attrition and low intervention
effectivity. Furthermore, no agreement exists on how to accurately assess the level engagement in DBCIs. Research with existing fitness applications suggests that including features commonly used in social media and gaming may have promising properties to increase engagement.
This project proposes to a) develop a standard for measuring engagement in DBCIs and b) to address a lack of engagement in digital interventions by assessing the effectivity of social interaction and gamification features by means of a randomized control trial. The aim of the intervention is to increase weekly moderate-intensity PA in adult office workers to the required
minimum of 150 minutes.
We hypothesize that the experimental conditions including social interaction and gamification features will result in higher intervention engagement of the participants and thus be more effective at increasing weekly MVPA.