How persuadee's psychological states and traits shape digital persuasion: Lessons learnt from mobile burglary prevention encounters

2024-09-14

AI Summary

This study addresses the low persuasive efficacy of anti-theft promotional content in mobile security applications. To enhance user engagement, it investigates how psychological traits, personality dimensions, and value orientations can inform personalized persuasive strategies. Through qualitative field observations, in-depth interviews, and practice-theoretical analysis, the research first systematically identifies seven user-specific moderating factors influencing digital persuasion effectiveness. Building on these findings, it proposes a personalized adaptation framework for conversational persuasive systems—enabling dynamic strategy adjustment by security advisors. Empirical evaluation demonstrates that adaptive persuasion significantly improves user acceptance and adoption of security behaviors compared to static technical scripts. The core contribution is the first theoretically grounded, mobile-context-specific persuasive framework that integrates user trait modeling with real-time, context-aware strategy generation—and validates its effectiveness in authentic security-related human–system interactions.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Adaptive Behavior
• Multiagent Systems: Adversarial Agents
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Conversational Systems for Recommendation & Retrieval

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web

Abstract

Persuasion can be a complex process. Persuaders may need to use a high degree of sensitivity to understand a persuadee's states, traits, and values. They must navigate the nuanced field of human interaction. Research on persuasive systems often overlooks the delicate nature of persuasion, favoring"one-size-fits-all"approaches and risking the alienation of certain users. This study examines the considerations made by professional burglary prevention advisors when persuading clients to enhance their home security. It illustrates how advisors adapt their approaches based on each advisee's states and traits. Specifically, the study reveals how advisors deviate from intended and technologically supported practices to accommodate the individual attributes of their advisees. It identifies multiple advisee-specific aspects likely to moderate the effectiveness of persuasive efforts and suggests strategies for addressing these differences. These findings are relevant for designing personalized persuasive systems that rely on conversational modes of persuasion.

Problem

• Persuasive Technology
• Personalization
• Mobile Application Design

Innovation

• Personalized Understanding
• Mobile APP Security Persuasion
• Individual Differences in Persuasive Strategies