Choice Architecture for Health, Fitness, and Recreation
Abstract
The topic of choice architecture in this paper addresses the strategy of influencing the choices people make as participants in health, fitness, and recreation activities. The project-ed scarcities of Time, Authenticity, and Trust identified by Lewis and Bridger (2000) are variables that help to explain the trend of accelerated expectations by consumers and the trend toward individualism in services reported by Penn (2007) as well as the increasing emphasis on lifestyle reported by Cordes and Ibrahim (2003). Participants in health, fitness, or recreation activities may orient to participation as an achievement behavior with a sense of obligation and a focus on outcome or as a leisure-based behavior with the use of choice and an orientation to experience (Dixon, 2003). Re-cent survey work by Ott (2010) explored the value of time and attention for consumers and yielded the identification of four categorical reasons or criteria that help people determine a benefit for their consumption-Motivation, Habit, Convenience, and Value. The authors of this paper felt that these four categories for reasons or criteria were limited to the con-text of achievement as presented by Ott (2010). The authors of this paper included information that would “share” these four categories of criteria or reasons for initiating activities in health, fitness, and recreation as leisure-based behaviors. The four categories can function as shared criteria or reasons for participation in both the context of achievement and the con-text of leisure-based behaviors. As a result, professionals in health, fitness, and recreation services have eight different criteria or reasons to offer participants as benefits of participa-tion for a better quality of life or sense of accomplishment. The use of these shared criteria or reasons for participation represents a type of “choice architecture” for professionals to consider in motivating participants in health, fitness, and rec-reation activities.
