Behavior Matching

What is Behavior Matching?

Behavior Matching is a step in Jason Hreha’s Behavioral Strategy approach. It involves generating possible behaviors for a defined user group, evaluating those behaviors against the project goal and user research, and selecting promising candidates.

How Behavior Matching works

Hreha’s original overview divides the process into behavior ideation, behavior ranking, and behavior selection. Its considerations include whether an action is appealing, feasible, socially acceptable, rewarding, useful, and relevant to the desired outcome. The approach concerns groups as well as individuals.

1. Behavior ideation: generate several actions that could serve the goal.
2. Behavior ranking: compare their appeal, practicality, and likely relevance to the outcome using what you know about the people involved.
3. Behavior selection: choose promising actions to develop and test.

The point is to question the action before trying to make people do it. Two activities can serve the same health goal while making very different demands on a person’s time, skills, personality, and preferences.

A Behavior Matching example

Imagine a workplace trying to offer an enjoyable movement break. Two candidates are a short group walk at lunch and a short dance session in a room on site. Suppose both are practical options for the employees involved, but they make different demands.

The team initially favors dance because the room is available and the session fits the break. Interviews then show that many employees enjoy walking with colleagues but dislike performing movements in front of a group. Observation also finds a nearby walking route that fits the available time. Those findings move walking higher in the ranking for this group. A different group might prefer dance.

The team pilots the walk and checks participation, enjoyment, timing, and whether it serves the intended purpose. Selecting a promising candidate does not establish the result. The matching work changes which behavior is tested, rather than merely adding reminders to the first idea.

What the evidence supports

This is Hreha’s practitioner approach. Its rankings help organize a decision; they are not a validated test that tells you which action will certainly become a habit. The selected behavior still needs to be tried in the relevant setting.

Behavior Matching and the Behavioral State Model handle adjacent decisions. Behavior Matching helps choose among possible actions. After a target behavior is selected, BSM helps investigate eight Personal and Context Components that may support or constrain it. Both produce hypotheses and choices that still need testing.

Related research by Woolley and Fishbach (2017) links immediate rewards, such as enjoyment, with persistence in goal activities. That finding supports examining the experience of a behavior; it does not directly validate Behavior Matching as a complete method.