School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Xi'an 710126, China.
College of Business and Entrepreneurship, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX 78539, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Aug 23;15(9):1819. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15091819.
Ant Forest is an emerging mobile application platform that engages people in environment-friendly behavior with fragmented time and helps them cultivate ecological awareness and habit. Users grow virtual trees on the platform with the energy saved from daily low-carbon activities, and Ant Forest plants real saplings in desertified areas when the "trees" become big enough. Facilitating the public's participation in such green welfare, Ant Forest is a new-generation persuasive system with functions like social media and gamification. In addition to perceived persuasiveness in the existing literature, this study includes sense of achievement and perceived entertainment as extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, respectively, to explain people's continuous use of such a system and consequent behavior change. The results of a survey suggest that primary task support, perceived credibility, and perceived social support associated with Ant Forest positively affect the user's continuance intention through the mediation of perceived persuasiveness, sense of achievement, and perceiving entertaining. Furthermore, perceived persuasiveness and continuance intention lead to ultimate behavior change. The findings suggest the importance of both persuasive and motivational considerations in the implementation of new-generation persuasive systems to make them effective in the long run.
蚂蚁森林是一个新兴的移动应用平台，它利用人们碎片化的时间，鼓励人们参与环保行动，帮助他们培养生态意识和习惯。用户可以通过日常低碳活动节约的能量在平台上种植虚拟树木，当“树木”足够大时，蚂蚁森林就会在荒漠化地区种植真正的树苗。蚂蚁森林促进了公众参与绿色福利，它是一种具有社交媒体和游戏化功能的新一代有说服力的系统。除了现有文献中感知的说服力外，本研究还将成就感和感知娱乐分别作为外在和内在动机，分别从感知的说服力、成就感和感知娱乐三个方面来解释人们对这种系统的持续使用以及由此产生的行为变化。一项调查结果表明，与蚂蚁森林相关的主要任务支持、感知可信度和感知社会支持通过感知说服力、成就感和感知娱乐的中介作用，对用户的持续意图产生积极影响。此外，感知说服力和持续意图会导致最终的行为改变。研究结果表明，在实施新一代有说服力的系统时，说服力和激励因素都很重要，这样才能使它们长期有效。
