Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Mar 22, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 13, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Analysis of Mechanisms of Health Behavioral Intention Change Through Serious Game Targeting Lifestyle-related Diseases: Experimental Study With Different Age Groups
ABSTRACT
Background:
Health activities should be tailored to individual lifestyles and values. To raise awareness of practical health behaviors, various practices related to health education, such as interactive activities among individuals with different backgrounds, have been developed. Moreover, serious games have been used as a tool for facilitating communication. However, studies that investigated the mechanisms of behavioral intention change in relation to health through serious games based on the framework of the theory of planned behavior are few.
Objective:
The study aims to investigate the mechanisms of behavioral intention change among participants of various age groups after intervention using a serious game called “Negotiate Battle,” which is established to increase awareness of lifestyle-related diseases.
Methods:
Three age groups (i.e., adults, university students, and high school students) played the serious game and answered a questionnaire before, immediately after, and 2–4 weeks after the game. The questionnaire was composed of four factors according to the theory of planned behavior. The study employed structural equation modeling and compared the results of the three groups.
Results:
The study found that perceived behavior control was the key factor of behavioral intention change. Immediately after the game, causal relationship from perceived behavioral control to behavioral intention was enhanced or maintained for all groups. Analysis of free descriptions after intervention suggested that experiencing dilemma is related to learning and behavioral intention.
Conclusions:
The study revealed that the serious game changed the behavioral intention of adolescents and adults regarding lifestyle-related diseases, and changes in perceived behavioral control mediated the alteration mechanism.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.