Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 30, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 18, 2021
Fitness Tracker Information and Privacy Management: a Scenario-based Survey Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Fitness trackers allow users track and monitor fitness related activities such as distance walked, calorie intakes, sleep quality, and heart rate. Fitness trackers have become increasingly popular in the last decade. In fact, one in five Americans use a device and/or an app to keep track of their fitness related activities. Those devices generate massive and important data that, if shared with health providers, could help physicians make better assessments of their patients’ health. This ultimately could leads to better health outcomes and perhaps even lower cost. However, sharing personal fitness information with healthcare providers come with drawbacks, mainly related to risk of privacy loss and information misuse.
Objective:
This study investigates the influence of granting users a granular privacy control on their willingness to share fitness information.
Methods:
The study utilizes 270 valid responses collected from Mtrurkers through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The conceptual model was tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).
Results:
The findings show that people are willing to share their fitness information if they have granular privacy control.
Conclusions:
This study provides practical and theoretical implications. The study integrates the communication privacy management theory and the privacy calculus model.
Citation
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Copyright
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