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Designing Persuasive Social Robots for Health Behavior Change: A Systematic Review of Behavior Change Strategies and Evaluation Methods

Jiaxin Xu, Chao Zhang, Raymond H. Cuijpers, Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn

TL;DR

This systematic review maps how social robots are designed to influence health behaviors and how these interventions are evaluated. By coding 39 studies (2012–2025) against the Behavioral Change Techniques taxonomy and the Persuasive Systems Design framework, the authors identify four strategy families—coaching, counseling, social influence, and persuasion-enhancing—and reveal a heavy emphasis on coaching and embodied interaction, with limited long-term evaluations and theoretical grounding. The findings offer concrete design heuristics (e.g., modeling, feedback, personalization, social bonding) and highlight methodological gaps, such as a scarcity of longitudinal studies and the need for theory-driven motivation measures. Together, these insights provide a foundation for more robust, ethically aware, and ecosystem-integrated persuasive social robots in health-promoting contexts.

Abstract

Social robots are increasingly applied as health behavior change interventions, yet actionable knowledge to guide their design and evaluation remains limited. This systematic review synthesizes (1) the behavior change strategies used in existing HRI studies employing social robots to promote health behavior change, and (2) the evaluation methods applied to assess behavior change outcomes. Relevant literature was identified through systematic database searches and hand searches. Analysis of 39 studies revealed four overarching categories of behavior change strategies: coaching strategies, counseling strategies, social influence strategies, and persuasion-enhancing strategies. These strategies highlight the unique affordances of social robots as behavior change interventions and offer valuable design heuristics. The review also identified key characteristics of current evaluation practices, including study designs, settings, durations, and outcome measures, on the basis of which we propose several directions for future HRI research.

Designing Persuasive Social Robots for Health Behavior Change: A Systematic Review of Behavior Change Strategies and Evaluation Methods

TL;DR

This systematic review maps how social robots are designed to influence health behaviors and how these interventions are evaluated. By coding 39 studies (2012–2025) against the Behavioral Change Techniques taxonomy and the Persuasive Systems Design framework, the authors identify four strategy families—coaching, counseling, social influence, and persuasion-enhancing—and reveal a heavy emphasis on coaching and embodied interaction, with limited long-term evaluations and theoretical grounding. The findings offer concrete design heuristics (e.g., modeling, feedback, personalization, social bonding) and highlight methodological gaps, such as a scarcity of longitudinal studies and the need for theory-driven motivation measures. Together, these insights provide a foundation for more robust, ethically aware, and ecosystem-integrated persuasive social robots in health-promoting contexts.

Abstract

Social robots are increasingly applied as health behavior change interventions, yet actionable knowledge to guide their design and evaluation remains limited. This systematic review synthesizes (1) the behavior change strategies used in existing HRI studies employing social robots to promote health behavior change, and (2) the evaluation methods applied to assess behavior change outcomes. Relevant literature was identified through systematic database searches and hand searches. Analysis of 39 studies revealed four overarching categories of behavior change strategies: coaching strategies, counseling strategies, social influence strategies, and persuasion-enhancing strategies. These strategies highlight the unique affordances of social robots as behavior change interventions and offer valuable design heuristics. The review also identified key characteristics of current evaluation practices, including study designs, settings, durations, and outcome measures, on the basis of which we propose several directions for future HRI research.
Paper Structure (32 sections, 1 figure)

This paper contains 32 sections, 1 figure.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related work
  3. Persuasive social robots
  4. Behavioral intervention technology
  5. Behavior change strategies
  6. Method
  7. Defining terminology
  8. Eligibility criteria
  9. Search strategy
  10. Study selection
  11. Data extraction and analysis
  12. Results
  13. Social robots applied
  14. Targeted behavior domains
  15. Behavior change strategies
  16. ...and 17 more sections

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: PRISMA flow diagram of included and excluded papers.