Evaluating Consumer m-Health Services for User Engagement and Health Promotion: An Organizational Field Experiment

Introduction Chronic disease is prevalent and costly in the U.S. (Tu \& Cohen, 2009). Poor eating habit is one factor that account for risk of chronic disease (Arsand, Varmedal, \& Hartvigsen, 2007). Smartphone technology has been promising to improve preventive health outcomes. However, its great potential has not been widely applied to people's eating behaviors and its impact is unknown. Professional and peer supports can improve health status (Elkjaer et al., 2010; Lorig et al., 1999; Perri, Sears, \& Clark, 1993). However, the former is usually delivered didactically or passively with limited use of smartphones. There is also little evidence of the effect of peer support delivered by smartphones in the domain of healthy eating. This research aims to study what smartphone technology can do to upgrade professional and peer supports, and to evaluate the impact of these mobile-app enabled supports on people's behavior of healthy eating and user engagement. Hypotheses According to Social Cognitive Theory, we hypothesize the following: 1. Mobile-enabled self-monitoring approach improves users' healthy eating behaviors through improved self-efficacy 2. Professional support improves users' healthy eating behaviors through improved self-efficacy 3. Peer support improves users' healthy eating behaviors through improved self-efficacy 4. The amount of support is positively correlated with the change in behaviors and their determinants Experiment Design The hypotheses will be examined bya 4-month randomized field experiment. 375 subjects will be recruited and assigned to one of the five arms to receive the corresponding tool for diet management at no cost. Arm 1: a mobile App with both professional and peer support Arm 2: a mobile App with peer support only Arm 3: a mobile App with professional support only Arm 4: a mobile App without any support Arm 5: a non-mobile web App In addition to the App usage data, five surveys are conducted at baseline and the end of each mo