How mHealth app incentives drive health and transit

Walking is well known to have significant health benefits, but few people achieve the daily recommended steps. Fortunately, mobile health (mHealth) applications have emerged as promising tools to promote physical activity. These apps track user activities on mobile devices to deliver health and wellness services. However, the effectiveness of these apps in increasing daily walking behavior remains underexplored, partly due to variations in their incentive structures.

Dr. Haruka Kato, Junior Associate Professor at Osaka Metropolitan University, investigated the impact of incentive design on walking behavior using a local mHealth application called HealthSmart-Senboku.

Developed for residents and visitors of Senboku New-Town in Japan, this mHealth app offers unique incentive features that convert users’ daily step counts into digital rewards. HealthSmart-Senboku provides two types of incentives where users can either exchange daily walking steps for shopping coupons redeemable at selected local stores or digital train tickets for travel on Nankai Railway’s Senboku Line.

The research is published in the Journal of Transport & Health.

Dr. Kato’s study found that users who utilized the train ticket exchange incentive increased their daily walking by an average of 626.2 [95% CI: 0.27, 1252.2] steps/day over a five-month period. Additionally, those who used shopping coupon incentives walked 715.2 [95% CI: 277.4, 1153.0] steps/day more on average than those who did not use them.

“These findings suggest that HealthSmart-Senboku’s ticket exchange incentives effectively promote active travel,” said Dr. Kato.

“The results highlight the potential of mHealth apps to encourage both physical activity and public transportation use toward Healthy New Towns through well-designed incentive systems.”