JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

With the development of emerging technologies, digital behavior change interventions (DBCIs) help to maintain regular physical activity in daily life.

Objective:

To comprehensively understand the implementations of habit formation techniques in current DBCIs, a systematic review was conducted to investigate the implementations of behavior change techniques, types of habit formation elements, and design implementations in current DBCIs.

Methods:

The process of this review followed the PRISMA guidelines. Four databases were systematically searched from 2012 to 2022, which included Web of Science, Scopus, ACM Digital Library, and PubMed. Inclusion criteria include applying digital tools to physical activity, evaluating techniques of behavior change intervention, and research articles in English. Three researchers coded selected studies independently.

Results:

In conclusion, forty-one identified research articles were included in this review. The results show that the most applied behavior change techniques were the self-monitoring of behavior, goal setting, and prompts/cues. Moreover, habit formation techniques were identified from intention, cues, and positive reinforcement, which automatic monitoring, descriptive feedback, general guidelines, self-decided goals, time-based cues, and virtual rewards were widely used.

Conclusions:

Concluded habit formation techniques were located into target-mediated (generalization and personalization) and technology-mediated interactions (explicitness and implicitness) to suggest future DBCIs design.