Role model in human physical activity

Abstract

Physical activity is an area of life in which social influence plays a major role. Observing the activity of a sedentary person may cause the observer to exercise less; observing a persistently active person can serve as a motivating factor. The goal of this research is to determine how to optimally pair individuals in order to facilitate motivational relationships with respect to physical activity. This research performs an observational study of data collected from a mobile health and fitness application, iBurnCalorie, which allows users to follow each other in addition to tracking physical activity. Through this social feature, this study examines the influence of users on each other's activity patterns. Our preliminary results indicate that some users have chosen effective role models without any intervention. If this natural effect can be replicated, such a novel interventional networking feature could have a significant impact within iBurnCalorie and all similar applications.