Do activity trackers lead to a dependency effect?

Abstract

According to World Health Organization (2018), there is an 8% increase in the death rate over the past decade, attributed to Non communicable diseases (NCDs), that are defined as long term, not transmissible diseases whose evolution is generally slow (WHO, 2018). One of the leading risk factors from non communicable diseases is physical inactivity. Physical activity trackers have shown been promising to fight physical inactivity (Hoy, 2016). However, recent studies have shown that by using physical activity trackers brings some side effects such as reducing the enjoyment of walking (Etkin, 2016). Furthermore, another side effect that could appear by using a physical activity tracker is a dependence effect (Attig, 2019). Dependence effect according to Attig (2019) refers to the need of users to be awarded by the activity tracker so he will do physical activity (e.g. Go for a walk). Although in Etkin (2016) and Attig (2019) studies, the dependence effect was measured through self-reports. The scope of this thesis is to examine the likelihood of dependency effect when using activity trackers, through a four-week quasi experimental study using objective behavioral metrics. Specifically, the goal of this thesis is to examine whether by giving participants notifications whenever they have to stand up and take a walk, will over time reduce the capacity to regulate their behavior. If this reduction of monitoring themselves will appear that means that a dependency effect on the activity trackers to do physical activity is developed. In order to do this, an app will be developed that will enable the option to make interventions as well as monitor users behavior. In the following chapters we will first motivate the need for this research, then we will introduce the theoretical framework which is self-regulation theory, after we will perform a literature review on the topic. Lastly, we will describe the methodology as well as the process we used to design and develop the app that is required for the interventions