Seeking Project Partners for Behavioural Research and Digital Wellbeing Validation

Zopanta Ltd is a Cyprus-based digital wellbeing startup developing a mobile application and optional connected physical device designed to help people interrupt automatic doomscrolling and make more conscious decisions about their digital behaviour.

Our current research question is whether introducing a short physical interaction before a continue or stop decision can create stronger and more lasting behavioural effects than digital friction alone.

Zopanta is already collaborating with researchers from the University of Cyprus Department of Psychology on behavioural research, study design and evaluation of the intervention.

We are now seeking project cooperation with universities, research organisations, innovation centres and technology partners interested in areas such as:

• behavioural science and psychology;

• digital wellbeing and prevention;

• human-computer interaction;

• digital health and behavioural interventions;

• research methodology and statistics;

• mobile technologies and connected devices;

• data analysis and responsible AI;

• pilot implementation and impact evaluation.

Potential areas of cooperation include:

• controlled behavioural studies;

• comparison of digital-only and device-assisted interventions;

• multi-country pilot projects;

• user engagement and behavioural research;

• technology and product validation;

• impact measurement;

• joint applications to Horizon Europe and other European research and innovation programmes.

Potential research outcomes could include changes in time spent in selected apps, scrolling-session duration, user engagement with the intervention, perceived control, continued use over time and whether any behavioural effects persist after repeated use.

Zopanta does not currently claim that the intervention produces lasting habit change. This is one of the central questions we want to investigate through structured research and collaboration.

We are particularly interested in partners who can contribute scientific expertise, participant recruitment, research infrastructure, behavioural measurement, pilot environments, technology expertise or experience in European collaborative projects.

Our objective at MEET in Italy for Life Sciences is to identify organisations with complementary capabilities and develop concrete project ideas that can progress into joint studies, pilot programmes or funded European research collaborations.