JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Although personal health devices (PHDs) offer great potential to monitor personal fitness and health parameters, many users discontinue using them after a few months. Thus, it is critical to study the post-adoption behaviors of current users in order to enhance their engagement with PHDs and use behaviors. However, there is little empirical research on what factors affecting users to engage in beneficial use behaviors. Mindfulness and identity are not new topics but the applications of these concepts in information systems (IS) fields are emerging themes. IT mindfulness has been conceptualized in previous studies, however, little is known about the antecedents and consequences of IT mindfulness in the mobile health context.

Objective:

Our main objective is to explore both IT identity and IT mindfulness in order to develop the new ground for research in the domain of mHealth post-adoption. Thus, we aim to explain why a user should be fully mindful of his/her engagement with PHD and what could be the consequences and implications.

Methods:

This study proposes that IT mindfulness can play an important role in improving use behaviors of PHD users. Through an online survey with 450 current users of a PHD, our article tests the relationship between IT identity and IT mindfulness in the post-adoption stage of using PHDs.

Results:

We found that IT identity significantly shapes IT mindfulness associated with PHDs. Moreover, the IT identity-IT mindfulness relationship is negatively moderated by individuals’ perceived health status. Finally, results show that IT mindfulness can significantly predict automatic use behaviors (e.g., continued intention to use), active use behaviors (e.g., feature use and enhanced use behaviors), and commitment behaviors in using PHDs (e.g., loyalty).

Conclusions:

The findings of this study provide implications for both research and practice. This study can contribute to our current understandings of IT mindfulness by developing and empirically testing a research model that explains the determinants and outcomes of IT mindfulness construct in the context of PHDs. Results imply that IT mindfulness significantly helps individuals express their alertness, awareness, openness, and orientation in the present in their post-adoption interactions with smart devices used for healthcare purposes. Finally, our findings may assist practitioners and IT developers in designing mindfulness-supporting PHDs. Due to the impact of IT mindfulness on post-adoption behaviors, its four dimensions could be used for designing PHD technologies. Moreover, PHD developers may need to put their efforts into means of increasing IT mindfulness by reinforcing IT identity to serve and retain a wide range of target users.