Cues for Increasing Social Presence for Mobile Health App Adoption.

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Health Communication
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Mobile health (mHealth) apps are vital for disease prevention and health promotion.
• User perception of app design significantly influences adoption rates.
• Incorporating social presence cues can foster positive user impressions and encourage mHealth engagement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of social context cues (conversational vs. community) on emergent and transcendent social presence in mHealth apps.
• To analyze the indirect effects of these cues, mediated by social presence, on user trust, perceived usability, and adoption intentions.

Main Methods:

• An online experiment was conducted with 587 US adults.
• Participants were exposed to different social context cues (conversation, community, or none).
• Measures included social presence, app trust, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and intention to use.

Main Results:

• Conversational cues effectively simulated feelings of new, emergent social interactions.
• Community cues enhanced perceptions of established social connections, fostering transcendent social presence.
• Both cue types demonstrated positive indirect effects on app trust, usefulness, and user adoption intentions.

Conclusions:

• Social context cues are crucial for designing effective mHealth applications.
• Leveraging conversational and community cues can significantly improve user engagement and trust.
• mHealth app development should strategically incorporate these cues to enhance health promotion delivery and uptake.