How emotions stimulate people affected by cancer to use personalised health websites.

Abstract

This paper focuses on helping people affected by cancer – which is the leading cause of death worldwide - by identifying their personalisation needs for health websites. The aim is to identify a set of personalisation features that users prefer on these websites. Delving in a less explored area, the study also seeks to understand how user emotional states correlate with their needs for personalisation, to better define user models for health websites. Through a controlled experiment, based on the survey questionnaire method, we established that participants perceived that personalisation features offered on the evaluated website do meet their needs. More interestingly, perceived personalisation needs are influenced by certain emotions, primarily positively valenced emotions (e.g., interest). Finally, two factors positively impact intentions to reuse the website: personalisation needs and post-usage emotions. The outcomes of this study inform on ways to increase user engagement on health websites and improve online support available to people affected by cancer.