10,000 Steps a Day for Health? User-based Evaluation of Wearable Activity Trackers

Abstract

We present the results of a survey on perceived service quality and service acceptance of activity trackers with a focus on country-based differences (US and Germany)

Health promotion with physiolytics: What is driving people to subscribe in a data-driven health plan

“…This does not strike us, given that there has been constant media attention to data breaches, hacking attacks, and illegal data repurposing practices of health insurances, which culminated in a major lawsuit against one of the biggest Swiss health insurances [91]. In this sense, our study corroborates the findings of prior studies which equally proved that trust and privacy concerns significantly influence the intention to use consumer health wearables [42,72,77]. However, different from these studies, our conceptualization varies in that we did not refer to device manufacturers.…”

“…This is not so much surprising given that multiple recent studies on consumer health wearables [e.g. 69,72,78,79,88,89] have reported on a positive relation between the expected impact (often conceptualized as perceived performance, usefulness, utility, confirmation, or value) for health behavior change and the use intention of a device. Similarly, our results suggest that individuals may be positively inclined to participate in a data-driven health plan if they genuinely believe that physiolytics can support them in achieving their health goals.…”

“…Several studies have highlighted that age [69,70] and gender [71] are important moderators when it comes to making a decision whether or not to adopt wearable devices or health apps. While acknowledging the fact that the personal health status could be an additional relevant moderator [72], there have not been many studies that specifically investigated how a person's PLOS ONE condition might affect the adoption behavior of physiolytics. Certainly, determining if an individual is "being healthy" is not easy, given that it is a relative concept which experts constantly redefine and reshape in view of current societal changes and new medical evidence (note: up until the end of the 50's smoking was not considered a health risk).…”

“…In this sense, we deem it important to not only investigate the adoption of wearables for leisure and personal use, as currently dominant in the literature [e.g. 72,77,89], but also draw the attention to possible tensions from institutionally driven digital initiatives. For instance, Hamel, Cortez [92] and Piwek, Ellis [93] point to the need of developing a regulatory framework for the collection or repurposing of data gathered with physiolytics devices.…”

A step away from impaired well-being: a latent growth curve analysis of an intervention with activity trackers among employees

“…Activity trackers are small electronic devices that can be worn on an individual's body to collect and display health data, such as number of steps, with high validity (Evenson et al, 2015;Hoy, 2016;Huang et al, 2016;Ilhan & Henkel, 2014;Simunek et al, 2016). These devices have become increasingly prominent as a means of improving physical activity, which is defined as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure (Caspersen et al, 1985).…”