Behavior Change Techniques in Digital Interventions for Health Behavior Change: A Taxonomy of Popular Mobile Applications

Abstract

Health behavior change interventions can support individuals in establishing habits beneficial to their health. Hence, they can help to prevent diseases and reduce mortality caused by unhealthy behaviors. The delivery of such interventions through mobile phones is promising. We developed a taxonomy of popular mobile applications for health behavior change, identifying the intervention’s aim and applied behavior change techniques. We classified 63 popular mobile applications according to our taxonomy. Thereby identifying the most prevalent behavior change techniques and combinations of the application’s aim and applied behavior change techniques. This result can be used to inform the design of future applications.