Public Service-Oriented Mobile Applications in Facilitating Changes in Human Behavior: The Effects of Design Factors

Due to the dramatic increase in usage of smart phones, mobile applications offer a promising public communication channel to effect behavioral change in areas such as energy saving. For this, identifying relationships between applications and behavioral change would be useful for public institutions to formulate more effective public communication strategies. Based on a design science approach, this study examines the effect of design factors of public service-oriented mobile applications such as personalization, accessibility, and representation richness on users’ cognitive and affective attitudes. Their effects on behavioral outcome are also investigated. The results of the analysis show that most design factors contribute significantly to the cognitive and affective attitudes of users. In turn, cognitive attitudes affect users’ behavioral change in terms of energy saving, while affective attitudes are positively associated with the average usage time of mobile applications and behavioral changes in terms of energy saving.