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1. Introduction
In China, 280m patients suffer from chronic diseases, with the annual health costs constantly increasing. Accordingly, the major concerns that require urgent solutions include alleviating the lack of medical resources and addressing the continued increase in healthcare costs. The rapid development of wearable smart devices and the manifold data technologies has ushered the field of health services into the era of mobile internet. Mobile health service (MHS) is an application program on mobile terminals. People use MHS to avail of relevant medical health service and information; actively improve their own behavior, lifestyles and work patterns; and enhance their physical quality or improve work efficiency (Sun et al., 2013; Deng et al., 2014). Unlike the electronic health service environment in computers, MHS transcends time and space limitations and significantly enhances the self-health management efficiency of users. Through MHS, patients can even monitor their vital sign data, actively participate in health management and focus on prevention instead of treatment (Junglas and Watson, 2006).
However, the Chinese mobile health applications remain embryonic in terms of development time and technical level. Therefore, attracting and retaining potential MHS users are particularly important. A substantial understanding of MHS-related user behavior could assuage the lack of medical resources and address the continued increase in healthcare costs. Thus, the current study addresses this issue by investigating the determinants of MHS use intention. Technology adoption has long been an important research issue in the field of information systems (IS) (Lin, 2006). However, prior research on MHS adoption exhibits three gaps.
First, most prior research interpreted MHS adoption behavior from the perspective of technology acceptance. These studies substantially emphasized on technological factors, such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived compatibility and technology design (Wu et al., 2007; Mohamed et al., 2011; Shareef et al., 2014). Relatively limited attention was provided to the health behavior aspects (Sun et al., 2013). However, focusing on technological progress does not guarantee the success of mobile health (Lee and Han, 2015). The use of health services is generally dependent on whether an individual perceives illness or the possibility of its occurrence (Andersen and Newman, 2005). Therefore, technological factors and health protection issues must be considered in the study of MHS...