Promoting Contextually Cued PA Habits
Condition: Exercise
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The primary goal of this two-month pilot study is to measure the behavioral change induced by
      targeted habit formation reminders that are surfaced via an iPhone app and financial
      incentives that were offered conditional on using a personalized contextual cue for a daily
      walking habit. The data and user feedback collected during this study will also be used to
      optimize the design and content of the iPhone app, which will be tested in future, larger
      scale experimental research.
    

Detailed description: 
      Subjects for this research are recruited on campus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and
      the State University of New York at Albany, and their participation was incentivized. After
      meeting the eligibility criterion (including have at least some intrinsic motivation for
      increasing physical activity), downloading the project's iPhone app, and signing the project
      consent form, all participants will have their step count data recorded for an 8-week study
      period.

      Existing interventions that have successfully improved study participants' health-related
      behaviors typically find that behavioral changes do not persist beyond 3 months after the
      intervention period. Fortunately, novel habit formation interventions from the psychology
      literature offer the potential for building long-term behavioral change and avoiding the
      common "relapse triangles" observed in these existing behavioral interventions. These new
      methods are based on the theory that habits are formed through the repetition of the same
      behavior in response to a stable, environmental cue. After an initial period of repetition,
      automaticity is formed, and the behavioral response becomes more effortlessly/unconsciously
      induced by the environmental cue. Behavioral reminders that reinforce a specific behavioral
      routine-environmental cue pair have been shown to support this initial period of habit
      formation; however, given the individualized nature of these reminders, a generalizable
      intervention method has not been developed and empirically tested. This research will use an
      iPhone app to examine the role of both general informational on contextually cued habits and
      the use of personalized reminders and financial incentives for using a daily physical
      activity contextual cue on the persistence of physical activity behavior after the
      intervention tools are withdrawn.
    

Intervention name(s): Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives; Cue-contingent weekly incentives; Habit Coaching; App use instructions
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Eligible to win $5 Amazon gift card conditional on completing a daily ≥10-minute walk at any time of day; Eligible to win $5 Amazon gift card conditional on completing a daily ≥10-minute walk within a +/-1 hour window of the pre-specified time of their chosen contextual walking cue; Received an instructional video on the benefits of contextual-cue-dependent habits and instructions on how to identify an optimal personalized cue that would consistently trigger their ≥10-minute walking habit; Received a basic training with the StepUp app
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Physical activity; Financial incentives; mHealth