Willingness to Pay for Mobile Health Live Streaming during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Integrating TPB with Compatibility

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to limit their physical interactions, which has led to unprecedented growth in mobile health live streaming (MHLS). Such practices have been facilitated by the rapid development of consumers’ willingness to pay for MHLS. However, few efforts appear in the literature to understand this change. This study aims to integrate the theory of planned behavior with compatibility to clarify payment motivations for MHLS during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Accordingly, the current study used a web-based, self-reported questionnaire to collect data from 506 Chinese consumers. Of the 535 distributed questionnaires, we received 505 valid responses, yielding an effective rate of 94.3%. The valid responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling, and the associated hypotheses were tested using partial least squares regression. The results showed that attitude, self-efficacy, preferred lifestyle, information quality, and interactive immersion (but not subjective norms) significantly predicted consumers’ willngness to pay (WTP). In addition, attitude partially mediated the association between preferred lifestyle, information quality, and WTP, respectively, while the mediating role in the relationship between interactive immersion and WTP was not confirmed. These findings can be used to formulate effective marketing strategies to benefit MHLS services and mobile payment technology in the country.

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“…Compared with other research theory, the TPB is more suitable to be applied in the current study. It has become a widely accepted model for discussing online consumers' intentions and discussing their behaviours on live streaming platforms, which has been supported by existing scholars (Lu et al, 2022, Xu et al, 2022b. According to the TPB research proposed by Ajzen (1991), the TPB model can be applied to analyse individuals' intention patterns from attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control aspects (Ajzen, 1991).…”