Persuasion and Persuasive Technology

Persuasion

Humans generally try to influence the behaviors of others through physical and non-physical means [1]. Coercion and persuasion are types of influence. While coercion is seen to be unethical, persuasion on the other hand is mainly considered morally justifiable and ethical. Persuasion is defined as influencing the opinions or actions of others without the use of coercion [2]. 

Persuasive Technology (PT)

Persuasive technology is the use of technology in persuasion.  B.J. Fogg defines PT as an interactive form of technology designed to influence people’s attitudes or behaviors [3]. According to Oinas-Kukkonen et al [4], PT is any form of technology designed to bring about change in one’s attitude or behaviors without the use of coercion or deception. PT can take several forms like e-commerce websites like Amazon that persuades users to buy more products, fitness bands like fitbit that encourages users to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle, and marketing products that drive the sale of goods. 

There are several advantages of persuasive technology over traditional media and human persuaders. Persuasive technology is more interactive than traditional media like radio ads and print. Research has shown that the more interactive a persuasive technique is, the more effective it becomes [3]. In terms of human persuaders and PT, human persuaders are not as persistent as PT. For example, Ebay persistently sends emails to users after a purchase for the user to rate the product bought. Ebay uses these ratings to generate personalized recommendations to users. In addition, using technology to persuade users, information can be presented in various forms including text, graphics, animation, etc. based on the user’s preference [5]. This is not possible with human persuasion. Finally, compared to humans, computer applications are ubiquitous. They can be used where human persuaders are not welcome and cannot exist [3].

Ethical implications of persuasion/persuasive technology

There is a thin line between persuasion and coercion. Repeatedly asking me to carry out an action because it will be beneficial to you could be termed coercion. So where does persuasion end and coercion begin?

Persuasive technology is currently a very active research area. I am presently looking into how PT can enhance sales in e-commerce businesses. I'm looking into how PT can enhance participation in social networks since most e-businesses that thrive have an active social network component. I'm welcome to comments, suggestions and possible collaboration.

References

[1] P. Powers, "Persuasion and Coercion: A Critical Review of Philosophical and Empirical Approaches," HEC Forum, vol. 19, pp. 125-143, 06/01, 2007.
[2] H. W. Simons and J. Jones, Persuasion in Society. Taylor & Francis, 2011.
[3] B. J. Fogg, "Persuasive technology: using computers to change what we think and do," Ubiquity, vol. 2002, pp. 5, 2002.
[4] H. Oinas-Kukkonen and M. Harjumaa, "Towards deeper understanding of persuasion in software and information systems," in Advances in Computer-Human Interaction, 2008 First International Conference On, 2008, pp. 200-205.
[5] W. C. King, M. Marie Dent and E. W. Miles, "The persuasive effect of graphics in computer-mediated communication," Comput. Hum. Behav., vol. 7, pp. 269-279, 01/01, 1991.

Do you like traveling but don't enjoy traveling alone? Women With Passports might be right for you.

Women with Passports™
For a multitude of reasons, there are a significant amount of women who are uncomfortable traveling alone. Too often this discomfort results in limited travel. Indeed, on occasion it completely prevents women from enjoying travel. There is something intrinsically wrong with this however real it may be for many women. Well, we are going to change this for women in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Calgary and Regina as well as women from other cities who wish to join us. 

It is our goal to facilitate a social-networking-travel group for women. It is not the intention of Ixtapa Travel to pick a destination and market it to ‘single women’. It is however our intention to: 

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Again, this is not a group aimed at single women. It is aimed at women who want to travel but do not wish to travel alone. Hopefully new friendships will form, new experiences will be gained and a love of friends and travel will form a successful social organization. 

Visit them at http://womenwithpassports.wix.com/home and you won't regret it!

Predicting Churn Of Expert Respondents In Social networks

As my research covers the use of social networks and persuasive technology to improve e-commerce businesses, I wrote a paper on predicting churn of expert respondents in social networks: a case study of StackOverflow. The idea behind this was three fold: 1)identify the experts in a typical Q&A network who answer most of the questions in order to keep the network active. 2)predict the probability of them churning (if they'll remain with the network or will leave) 3) suggest and implement persuasive technology that can successfully influence possible churners in the network and make them stay(work in progress).

The paper was accepted at the 14th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications. Yours truly was at the sunshine state to present the paper.

The abstract is below.

In Q&A social networks, the few respondents that answer most of the questions are an asset to that network. Being able to predict the churn of these expert respondents will enable the owners of such network put things in place in order to keep them. In this paper, we predicted the churn of expert respondents in Stack Overflow. We identified experts based on the InDegree of the respondents and the value of the incentives earned by these experts from the questions they have answered in the past. Using four data mining techniques: logistic regression, neural networks, support vector machines and random forests, we predicted user churn and evaluated our results with four evaluation metrics: percentage correctly classified, area under receiver operating characteristic curve, precision and recall. Of the four data mining algorithms, random forests performed best with PCC of 76%, ROC area of 0.82, precision of 0.76 and recall of 0.77.

The 52 weeks Challenge

One thing I've learnt about Mark Zukerberg is that every year he challenges himself with something new. this year, he is building a robot that will be his house keeper and will take care of his family. Last year, he read a new book every week. Well, this year, I'm challenging myself too.

Being a PhD student in a foreign land away from family and friends is not easy. The good thing though is that I've met friends that are so smart that they've inspired me over the period I've been here. Several of them read books more often than they watch TV, one of the reasons they are so smart. So this year, I've decided to take up the 52 books challenge; reading a new book every week for the rest of the year. 52 weeks, 52 books. Hopefully I'll be a better and hopefully smarter person by the 52nd week!

I'll start with an inspirational book I read while in high school that truly motivated me: The 7 habits of highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey

I'll let you know what I think of the book now that I'm a lot older (and maybe wiser :)).

Feel free to share your book suggestions with me.

Happy new year

Happy new year everyone!!!

I pray this year 2016 is a year of good health, God's favor and answered prayers. May all our dreams come true!

I have a lot to accomplish this year regarding my PhD. First there is my comprehensive and then several studies I have to carry out. And of course I have to write more papers. That's me in a nut shell. What are you hoping to accomplish this year?

I will do a recap of things I accomplished last year but didn't have time to blog about. So stay tuned!