Modeling Subcutaneous Microchip Implant Acceptance in the General Population: A Cross-Sectional Survey about Concerns and Expectations

Abstract

Despite the numerous advantages of microchip implants, their adoption remains low in the public sector. We conducted a cross-sectional survey to identify concerns and expectations about microchip implants among potential users. A total of 179 United States adults aged 18–83 years responded to two qualitative questions that were then analyzed using the thematic analysis technique. The identified codes were first categorized and then clustered to generate themes for both concerns and expectations. The prevalence of each theme was calculated across various demographic factors. Concerns were related to data protection, health risks, knowledge, negative affect, ease of use, metaphysical dilemmas, monetary issues, and negative social impact. Expectations included medical and non-medical uses, dismissal of microchips, technical advances, human enhancement, regulations, and affordability. The prevalence of concerns and benefits differed by immigration status and medical conditions. Informed by our findings, we present a modification to the Technology Acceptance Model for predicting public’s behavioral intention to use subcutaneous microchips. We discuss the five newly proposed determinants and seven predictor variables of this model by surveying the literature.

Assessing the Acceptance of Cyborg Technology with a Hedonic Technology Acceptance Model

“…We observed that the direct influence of perceived ease of use on behavioral intention is significant, which is consistent with the results obtained in the evaluation of insertable tech [5,31,33] in the field of insideable tech. However, its absolute value (0.066) is of little relevance, which contradicts [39], who observes that the impact of perceived ease of use on behavioral intention toward the technology evaluated has a value higher than that of performance expectancy.…”

“…The fact that theoretically data in insertable devices may be vulnerable to hacking [20] or that it may allow for user surveillance can fuel conspiracy theories that, from a societal norm perspective, discourage the use of insertable technologies [8]. The findings in [30,31] revealing that concerns about privacy and personal security significantly negatively impact the use of insideables may support this assertion.…”

“…Table 1 shows that there are various quantitative studies on the adoption of insertable technology that consider hedonic motivation [3,33] or the maximization of positive emotions and the minimization of negative emotions [31,32] as relevant factors. However, in the literature, loyalty is less common than performance expectancy.…”

“…Similarly, given the profound ethical and moral implications of implantable technologies, also makes suitable the use of a multiple ethics scale (MES), as in [28]. Therefore, relevant contributions in this way are seen in the TAM framework [20,[29][30][31][32], UTAUT groundwork [2,33], CAN [5,34,35] model, and MES [2,28,[36][37][38].…”

A Crowd-Sourcing Project to Understand, Prevent and Manage Incidences of Injury and Wounding to Astronauts and Off-Earth Colonists

“…The device may contain a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in any external database, such as personal identification, law enforcement, medical history, physical performance, medication and compliance with useage, allergies, and contact information. Although to date, human micro-chipping in the United States has low adoption due to concerns regarding data protection and use of knowledge, health risks, ease of use, negative social impact technical advances, human enhancement, regulations, and affordability which has prompted proposals to explore and modify where needed the technology acceptance model in the public sector [103]. However, this is a rapidly growing field and a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, however, it is conceivable, plausible and realistic to imagine a future in which space colonists are not only able to self-monitor their health, but monitor the health of their team members which would in turn be monitored by mission planners, allowing for corrective measures, for example, reduction in working hours to be implemented.…”