Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Aug 5, 2020
Date Accepted: Apr 13, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
The Integrated Model of Wearable Activity Tracker Use: Exploring Health Beliefs and Obesity Information Seeking Behaviors from a Nationally Representative Sample
ABSTRACT
Background:
Previous related studies mainly focus on the development and implementation of healthcare wearable technology, while theoretical research about adoption and actual usage of wearable activity tracker is relatively sparse. Technology acceptance model has been an only theoretical frame that dominantly explained the adoption of new health technology.
Objective:
This study aims to explore factors affecting wearable activity tracking device adoption and usage among both obese adults and healthy consumers from perspectives of individual health beliefs (perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits, and self-efficacy) and information seeking behaviors.
Methods:
Our Integrated Model of Wearable Activity Tracker Use (IMWAT) and proposed hypotheses were validated and tested with data collected from a population representative telephone survey (N=2006). The data was analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques including Structural Equation Modeling using R.
Results:
Our results show that perceived benefits of physical activity, perceived susceptibility and self-efficacy toward obesity are significant predictors of information seeking behavior that mediates their effects on the use of wearable activity trackers, while obesity severity perceptions directly promote the wearable device usage.
Conclusions:
The current study offers a theoretical contribution to the extension of the HBM and information seeking literature, while also providing practical recommendations for health technology developers and communicators of public obesity prevention campaigns.
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Copyright
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