Anke Grief-Winzrieth

The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of intense exercise per week. In Germany, less than half of the population reaches this minimum. There are many health interventions which try to tackle this problem, but there is still room for improvement. It is presumed that communication media influence the effectiveness of such health interventions. Existing models in health behavior research suggest that the impact of health-related information on behavioral change is influenced by the degree of immersion the communication medium provides. This pilot study aims to advance current research by presenting preliminary results of an experiment, designed to measure the behavioral effect of immersion during health interventions that are addressed to participants lacking in physical activity. During the experiment the effectiveness of communication through virtual-reality-headsets and communication through a pamphlet was compared. This work presents preliminary results of the experiment and points out implications for a larger scale implementation.