Passive prompts help to initiate healthy behaviour change

Key points

• A passive approach is more effective than an active approach in motivating workers to interrupt their sitting time.
• The effectiveness of this intervention is enhanced by providing a pre-intervention participant education session that explains the rationale, benefits, and expectations of the intervention strategy. Education sessions can increase compliance and motivation to follow the prompt and interrupt their sitting time with movement breaks.
• Nudge strategies can be useful for reducing prolonged sitting behaviour in office workers, but they need to be tailored to the specific context and preferences of the target group. The psychological and social factors that influence sedentary behaviour, such as perceived control, reactance, and presenteeism, need to be taken into account when designing and implementing nudge strategies.

Our relevant work

• A pilot study of increasing nonpurposeful movement breaks at work as a means of reducing prolonged sitting
• The effect of education on compliance to a workplace health and wellbeing intervention: Closing the loop
• Peer champions responses to nudge-based strategies designed to reduce prolonged sitting behaviour: Lessons learnt and implications from lived experiences of non-compliant participants