Persuading Peers in the Web: Social Influence and Tweeters vs. non-Tweeters

The present paper describes an experiment into the effects of sharing vs. receiving roles in a behavior change intervention over a social platform, Twitter. The purpose of the experiment was to explore the possible difference in how participation styles (tweeting vs. non-tweeting) affected the participants’ perceived health behavior. Participants (N=30) in two groups were either to encourage healthier eating by tweeting, or to read these messages in a Twitter feed. The findings from PLS-SEM analysis suggest that the different roles lead to different perceived health behavior outcomes. Social influence factors appeared to boost the tweeting group’s efficacy appraisals, but that efficacy was not seen to influence the perceived health behavior. For the non-tweeting group, efficacy appraisal influenced perceived health behavior. These observations led to the conclusion that the tweeting role may affect one’s perception of one’s actual health behavior, and that for non-tweeters receiving peer support over social media supports health behavior.