Background: Mobile health (mHealth) has potential to play a significant role in realizing a reversal of the current paradigm in health care toward a more patient-centric and more collaborative system to improve the outcomes obtained along with the quality and sustainability of health care systems.
Objective: The aim of this study was to explore and understand individual mHealth acceptance drivers between two groups of users: those with chronic health conditions and those without.
Methods: The extended unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT2) was enhanced with a new health-related framework: behavior intention to recommend and new mediation effects. We applied partial least squares (PLS) causal modeling to test the research model.
Results: We obtained 322 valid responses through an online questionnaire. The drivers of behavior intention with statistical significance were performance expectancy (β=.29, P<.001), habit (β=.39, P<.001), and personal empowerment (β=.18, P=.01). The precursors of use behavior were habit (β= .47, P<.001) and personal empowerment (β=.17, P=.01). Behavior intention to recommend was significantly influenced by behavior intention (β=.58, P<.001) and personal empowerment (β=.26, P<.001). The model explained 66% of the total variance in behavior intention, 54% of the variance in use behavior, and 70% of the variance in behavior intention to recommend.
Conclusions: Our study demonstrates a significant role of personal empowerment, as a second-order construct, in the mHealth acceptance context. The presence of a chronic health condition predicates an impact on acceptance of this technology.
Keywords: UTAUT2; digital health; health management; mHealth; patient empowerment.
©Tânia Salgado, Jorge Tavares, Tiago Oliveira. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (http://mhealth.jmir.org), 09.07.2020.