Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-07-07
Source: The Conversation – France in French (3)– By Claire Mollier, Assistant Professor in Behavioral and Experimental Economics, University Paris Nanterre
The essential
- The trend is towards applications that count your steps and motivate you to walk with frequent reminders sent to your smartphone.
- A study involving more than 20,000 users of one of these applications shows that, while notifications increase app usage, they do not lead to increased walking activity in most cases.
- The data analysis nonetheless suggests that these digital platforms could be of interest to audiences most distant from physical activity.
“‘You have not reached your step goal for today’ is a message that sounds familiar to you? Every day, millions of people receive this type of notification.
TheApple App Storeand theapplications on Androidaccounting respectively for nearly 35,000 and 36,000applicationsin 2024 health, the latter all seek to stand out.
Some, for example Strava or Runtastic, encourage social comparison through challenges or posts that allow sharing activities with the community. Others reward physical activity, like Carrot Rewards, possibly with financial incentives, like WeWard which pays you for walking.
A free app that pays you to motivate you to walk
Indeed, WeWard is a free application that allows you to earn a certain number of points each time you reach a step goal accomplished during the day (1,500, 3,000, 6,500, 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 steps). These points can then be converted into amounts of money and earn you up to about 4 euros per month.
This feature was created at the launch of the application, at the end of 2019, in the context of the transportation strike. It aimed to encourage and reward people who chose, or were led, to travel on foot.
From the point of view of health economics, this monetary incentive makes perfect sense sincestudies show that it can encourage the practice of physical activity. Furthermore, within the framework of walking (a free activity), the results should only be multiplied since this practice requires no maintenance costs (unlike a gym, for example).
To remind its users to validate their steps and thus collect their points, WeWard sends reminders every day. But do these messages truly encourage you to walk more?
Study the walking behaviors of app users
Why observe walking behaviors? Because walking is one of the forms ofphysical activitythe most accessible. It requires neither special equipment (thus no cost) nor a specific place or time and can therefore be integrated (more or less easily) into one’s routine.
For health economists, walking represents an interesting lever since encouraging individuals to walk more could allowto make significant public health savings. That is why, in aarticle published recently, we are interested in this practice through an experiment.
However, one of the difficulties sometimes lies in measuring these behaviors. Based on questionnaires, do individuals report their activity reliably? Do they themselves know how many steps they take each day?
Thanks to a collaboration with the step-tracking app WeWard, we were able to observe the real walking behaviors of the people who use it. We thus tested the effect of different reminders, sent directly to their phones by the app.
The reminders were designed to highlight different mechanisms that can be found in the application:
- Comparison with others:
“Today, the WeWarders have walked an average of X steps. And you?”
- Comparison with oneself:
“Last week, you walked an average of X steps. How many did you take today?”
- Monetary aspect:
“You have already validated your steps over the past few days, do it again to earn more points.”
We collected data on the walking behaviors of more than 20,000 individuals in France and studied whether their habits changed after the introduction of these new messages. Our study also sought to understand whether personalized messages, sent over a longer period, are more effective than messages sent over a shorter period.
Clicks, but no more walking
The first result of the study is clear: the new reminders do indeed manage to capture the users’ attention. Messages based on comparison with others encourage opening the application more. This effect is even more pronounced when the reminders are sent over three weeks rather than just one.
This observation is all the more interesting as our experiment took place during the year-end holidays, a period during which engagement with applications tends to naturally decline. The notifications thus helped to slow down the decrease in activity on the application. However, this increase in attention did not result in more walking.
The various indicators studied (daily activity, weekly average, or behaviors of the most active individuals on the application) tell the same story: notifications increase the use of the application without leading to more physical activity.
When capturing attention becomes a misleading indicator
One of the main lessons from our study is that attention paid to an application does not necessarily reflect a concrete change in behavior. In the field of digital technology, the success of an intervention is often measured through usage statistics: frequency of opening the application, time spent on the platform, or number of interactions. However, these indicators can provide a partial, even misleading, picture of their real effect on health.
Indeed, consulting an application is a relatively simple action. Permanently changing one’s daily habits is much less so. Walking more involves finding time, changing certain routines, and facing very concrete constraints, such as fatigue, professional obligations, or even weather conditions. In this context, a simple notification probably has limited impact.
Our results thus remind us that there is a significant difference between attracting users’ attention and truly changing their behaviors. Digital platforms often succeed very well in capturing our attention; this does not necessarily mean that they produce lasting effects on our lifestyles.
A potential especially among inactive people
Not all users react the same way to notifications. Among people who walked the least before the experiment, we observe a slight increase in the number of steps over time. No single type of notification seems to explain this evolution by itself, but this result suggests that health applications could be particularly useful for audiences who are most distant from physical activity.
The simple act of tracking one’s steps daily, visualizing progress, or receiving regular reminders can help make certain behaviors more concrete and visible. From a public health perspective, these populations represent a central issue: they are also the ones for whom an increase,even modest, physical activity could produce the most significant benefits.
On the importance of measuring what really matters
Our study highlights a significant challenge for digital platforms and public policies: measuring what truly matters. Strong engagement should not automatically be interpreted as success. An application may seem highly effective based on its internal statistics while producing little concrete change in the daily lives of users.
Our results do not call into question the value of health applications. They rather suggest that digital tools are probably more effective when integrated into broader systems: being supported by one’s social circle, setting goals, or gradually building habits over time.
Moreover, increasing one’s physical activity depends not only on motivation but also on daily constraints or social factors, such as gender. Indeed, our results are consistent with existing studies:women seem less active than men.
Applications can help make certain behaviors more visible and encourage awareness. However, lasting change in habits requires more than just a notification.
The authors do not work for, do not advise, do not own shares in, do not receive funds from an organization that could benefit from this article, and have declared no affiliation other than their research institution.
–ref. Do health apps really make us move more… or just click more? Example with an app to count your steps –https://theconversation.com/do-health-apps-really-make-us-move-more-or-just-click-more-an-example-with-an-app-to-count-your-steps-286605