Goal-setting in the context of a mobile health application : the case of YAS.life

• Autor(a) principal: Pfeifer, Michael Andreas
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/31295
• topic: Mobile health application; Mhealth; Goal-setting; Goal success; Goal difficulty; Ability; Aplicações móveis de saúde; Formulação de objetivos; Sucesso do objetivo; Dificuldade do objetivo; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

According to the World Health Organization, insufficient physical activity is one of the leading causes of global mortality. As previous research indicates, mobile health applications -and the use of goal-setting within these applications- can lead to healthier behaviors. This study is the first academic research specifically investigating the impact of goal difficulty on health goal success for mobile health applications. The analyses are based on individual behavioral data from the “YAS” application, a publicly available health application. In line with previous research on goal setting, this study provides empirical evidence that goal difficulty negatively influences goal success in the context of mobile health applications. Moreover, the results indicate that user ability has a moderating effect on the goal difficulty – goal success relationship, wherein the relationship between goal difficulty and goal success is steeper for people with high ability. The results of this study offer important insights into managerial decisions related to the design of mobile health applications, and for health psychology in general