An Investigation into the Susceptibility of Engineering Students to Educational Persuasive Technology

Research has shown that persuasive technology can successfully change people's behaviors and attitudes. Research has also shown that personalized persuasive technology is more effective at achieving desired goals than a one-size-fits-all approach. However, few studies have focused on the impact that personalized persuasive strategies have had on engineering education when these strategies account for different student attributes. This paper addresses this topic by investigating engineering students' susceptibility (n = 260 students) to five commonly used persuasive strategies in persuasive technology design, specifically Reward, Competition, Social Comparison, Trustworthiness and Social Learning. The results indicate that students are more likely to be susceptible to Trustworthiness and Reward strategies, followed by Competition, Social Learning and then Social Comparison. This study also highlights differences in susceptibility to certain persuasive strategies between different gender types, age groups and student education levels.