Personalizing health theories in persuasive game interventions to gamer types: an African perspective

Abstract

Persuasive games (PGs) informed by behaviour theories are effective tools for motivating health behaviour. It has been shown that tailoring PGs to the target audience increases their effectiveness. However, most existing studies on how to tailor PGs and gameful systems are focused on people from the Western cultures. There is a paucity of research on how to personalize PGs to the African audience. To advance research in this area, we conducted a large-scale study of 360 game players from Africa to investigate their eating habits and associated determinants of health behaviour to understand how health behaviour relates to their gamer types. We developed models showing the determinants of health behaviour for the seven gamer types identified by BrainHex. Our results show that gamer types play significant roles in the impact of various determinants on the health behaviour of Africans. People high in the achiever gamer type are motivated by perceived susceptibility (what they stand to lose), while daredevils are motivated by perceived benefit (what they stand to gain) from adopting a healthy lifestyle. Self-efficacy emerged as the most effective determinant overall, it influences health behaviour positively for all gamer types. We contribute to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and practice by offering design guidelines for tailoring PGs for health to Africans based on their gamer types.