Explore our sister journals here.

Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Date Submitted: Dec 13, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 17, 2018 - Feb 11, 2019
Date Accepted: May 29, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

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

Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to Investigate the Intention to Use Physical Activity Apps: Cross-Sectional Survey

Liu D, Maimaitijiang R, Gu J, Zhong S, Zhou M, Wu Z, Luo A, Lu C, Hao Y

Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to Investigate the Intention to Use Physical Activity Apps: Cross-Sectional Survey

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(9):e13127

DOI: 10.2196/13127

PMID: 31507269

PMCID: 6819082

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.

Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to Investigate the Intention to Use Physical Activity Apps: Cross-Sectional Survey

  • Di Liu; 
  • Remina Maimaitijiang; 
  • Jing Gu; 
  • Shuyi Zhong; 
  • Mengping Zhou; 
  • Ziyue Wu; 
  • Ao Luo; 
  • Cong Lu; 
  • Yuantao Hao

Background:

Many university students are lacking adequate physical exercise and are failing to develop physical activity (PA) behaviors in China. PA app use could improve this situation.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to use the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to investigate the intention to use PA apps among university students in Guangzhou, China, and how body mass index (BMI) moderates the effects of UTAUT in explaining PA app use intention.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1704 university students from different universities in Guangzhou, China. The UTAUT model was used to measure the determinants of intention to use PA apps.

Results:

Of the participants, 41.8% (611/1461) intended to use PA apps. All three UTAUT-related scales (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence) were positively associated with the intention to use PA apps after adjusting for background variables (adjusted odds ratio 1.10-1.31, P<.001). The performance expectancy scale had stronger associations with the intention to use PA apps among those whose BMI were beyond normal range compared with those whose BMI were within normal range (P<.001).

Conclusions:

UTAUT is useful for understanding university students’ intention to use PA apps. Potential moderating effects should be kept in mind when designing UTAUT-based interventions to improve PA via app use.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Liu D, Maimaitijiang R, Gu J, Zhong S, Zhou M, Wu Z, Luo A, Lu C, Hao Y

Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to Investigate the Intention to Use Physical Activity Apps: Cross-Sectional Survey

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(9):e13127

DOI: 10.2196/13127

PMID: 31507269

PMCID: 6819082

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© 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.