An empirical study of wearable technology acceptance in healthcare

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors associated with consumer’s intention to adopt wearable technology in healthcare, and to examine the moderating effects of product type on consumer’s adoption intention. Design/methodology/approach – An integrated acceptance model was developed based on unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2), protection motivation theory (PMT), and privacy calculus theory. The model was tested with 462 respondents using a survey. Findings – Consumer’s decision to adopt healthcare wearable technology is affected by factors from technology, health, and privacy perspectives. Specially, fitness device users care more about hedonic motivation, functional congruence, social influence, perceived privacy risk, and perceived vulnerability, but medical device users pay more attention to perceived expectancy, self-efficacy, effort expectancy, and perceived severity. Originality/value – This study is among the first to investigate healthcare wearable device from behavioral perspective. It also helps to comprehensively understand emerging health information technology (HIT) acceptance from technology, health, and privacy perspectives.