Preface to the International Workshop on Personalization in Persuasive Technology: Research Challenges and Opportunities Strategies

Persuasive Technology (PT) is a growing area of research which investigates how interactive systems can encourage and support people to change their behavior. Over the past two decades, several persuasive technologies and behavior change support systems aimed at promoting change in different domains, including health, safety and security, environmental sustainability, energy conservation, marketing, and education have been developed. Most of these technologies use the so-called one-size-fits-all approach in their design and evaluation, which has been shown to be far less effective at motivating behavior change. Personalization is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of PT as the most effective persuasive and motivational strategies are likely to depend on user characteristics such as the user’s personality, gender, age, culture, affective state, existing attitudes, behaviors, knowledge, and other inclinations [3,7,15,18–23].