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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Date Submitted: Sep 20, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 24, 2018 - Oct 11, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 9, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Investigating the Adoption of Mobile Health Services by Elderly Users: Trust Transfer Model and Survey Study

Meng F, Guo X, Peng Z, Lai KH, Zhao X

Investigating the Adoption of Mobile Health Services by Elderly Users: Trust Transfer Model and Survey Study

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(1):e12269

DOI: 10.2196/12269

PMID: 30622092

PMCID: 6329414

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Investigating the Adoption of Mobile Health Services by Elderly Users: Trust Transfer Model and Survey Study

  • Fanbo Meng; 
  • Xitong Guo; 
  • Zeyu Peng; 
  • Kee-Hung Lai; 
  • Xinli Zhao

Background:

Although elderly users comprise a major user group in the field of mobile health (mHealth) services, their adoption rate of such services is relatively low compared with their use of traditional health services. Increasing the adoption rate of mHealth services among elderly users is beneficial to the aging process.

Objective:

This study aimed to examine the determinants of mHealth service use intentions using a trust transfer model among elderly users facing declining physiological conditions and lacking support from hospitals.

Methods:

A survey comprising 395 users aged 60 years and above was conducted in China to validate our research model and hypotheses.

Results:

The results reveal that (1) trust in mHealth services positively influences use intentions, (2) trust in offline health services positively influences trust in mHealth services, (3) declining physiological conditions strengthen the effects of trust in offline health services regarding trust in mHealth services, (4) support from hospitals weakens the effects of trust in mHealth services on use intentions, and (5) the relationship between trust in offline health services and intention to use mHealth services is partially mediated by trust in mHealth services. The independent variables and moderators collectively explain a 48.3% variance in the use intention of mHealth services.

Conclusions:

We conclude that the trust transfer theory is useful in explaining the development of initial trust in mHealth services. In addition, declining physiological conditions and support from hospitals are important factors for investigating the adoption of mHealth services among elderly users.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Meng F, Guo X, Peng Z, Lai KH, Zhao X

Investigating the Adoption of Mobile Health Services by Elderly Users: Trust Transfer Model and Survey Study

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(1):e12269

DOI: 10.2196/12269

PMID: 30622092

PMCID: 6329414

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.