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ABSTRACT
The advancement of mobile technology and the increasing importance of health promote the boom in mobile health services (MHS) around the world. Although there have been several studies investigating the health technology acceptance behavior from a variety of theoretical perspectives, they have not provided a unified understanding. To fill this research gap, this paper: (1) reviews the health technology acceptance literature and discusses three prominent models (e.g., the technology acceptance model, the theory of planned behavior or the unified theory of use and acceptance of technology, and the protection motivation theory), (2) empirically compares the three models, and (3) formulates and empirically validates the unified model in the context of mobile health services. In the unified model of health technology acceptance, we propose that users' intention to use mobile health services is determined by five key factors: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and threat appraisals. The results show that the unified model outperforms the three alternative models by significantly improving the R-squares. Finally, the implications for theory and practice are put forward.
Keywords: mobile health; technology acceptance model (TAM); protection motivation theory (PMT); theory of planned behavior (TPB); the unified theory of use and acceptance of technology (UTAUT)
1. Introduction
The advancement of wireless networks and mobile devices has driven the emergence of mobile health services (MHS) which can be defined as a variety of healthcare services, including health consulting, hospital registering, and location-based services delivered through mobile communications and network technologies [Istepanian et al. 2006; Ivatury et al. 2009]. Compared to the previous electronic health services which are based on the desktop computer and wired network, MHS enables users to access to health services more conveniently. For example, when a user suddenly suffers a heart attack in the suburbs where the wired network is not available, s/he can press an SOS button on the customized mobile device for MHS, and then the emergency center of the hospital will receive the message, identify the location of the user, and arrange for the aid.
The most important issue for mobile health service providers is to attract and keep their users, precipitating the understanding on users' mobile health service adoption behavior as a critical issue for researchers on this specific research area....