Ethics of e-coaching: Implications of employing pervasive computing to promote healthy and sustainable lifestyles

Many people sincerely believe that it would be good to make lifestyle choices that have a positive effect on their own health, the social viability of their communities, and the longterm quality of the environment. Yet these same people often fail to act in accordance with these intentions. In this paper, we draw attention to the fact that people's failure to maintain healthy and sustainable lifestyles can often be explained in terms of self-regulation failure. We explain that pervasive “e-coaching” technologies have the potential to support individuals in attaining and maintaining healthy and sustainable lifestyles by supporting and strengthening people's self-regulatory capacities. Finally, we discuss six social and ethical concerns that e-coaching technology can raise as a first step towards an open debate about these concerns as well as the regulation issues and design choices related to them.