Understanding Smart Health Device Users' Intermittent Discontinuance

With the development of wearable technologies and with the rise of health-consciousness of the public,smart health devices such as smart wristbands,smart blood pressure monitors and smart body fat analyzer have become popular,opening a new era for personal health self-management,which has greatly changed the way people know about themselves and improve their quality of life.However,current studies on information systems post-adoptive behavior primarily focused on either continuance or discontinuance at a static point,neglecting the mutual transformation process between IS usage and rejection behavior,and failing to notice the phenomenon of re-use after discontinuance,that is intermittent discontinuance.This is very unfavorable for accurately grasping the real behavioral rules of IS post-adoptive behavior,and it is also very unfavorable for the realization of the smart health device's values in monitoring personal health information and providing personalized health information service.In this regard,this study aims to investigate the intermittent discontinuance,and to understand the potential drivers of smart health device users' intermittent discontinuance behavior.Specifically,by integrating and revising the expectation-confirmation theory and social influence theory to meet the unique concerns of intermittent discontinuance,this study proposes a model to understand smart health device users' intermittent discontinuance,in which inconsistent social influence,neutral disconfirmation,neutral satisfaction,and attitudinal ambivalence are incorporated.This study utilizes the online survey method to validate our proposed model.Using 428 online responses from smart health device user,the structural equation modeling results indicate that both inconsistent social influence and neutral disconfirmation have a positive effect on neural satisfaction and attitudinal ambivalence,respectively.Neutral satisfaction and attitudinal ambivalence will further exert a positive effect on intermittent discontinuance,respectively.In addition,attitudinal ambivalence also has a positive and significant effect on neutral satisfaction.The findings emerged from this study contribute to both research and practice.First,this study extends the concept of discontinuance to intermittent discontinuance,and further clarifies some key issues involved in intermittent discontinuance,such as definition,dimensions and distinctions between intermittent discontinuance and completely discontinuance.As such,this study will add new knowledge to the literature on users' IT post-adoptive behavior,and provide a solid foundation for the subsequent research on intermittent discontinuance.Second,based on the unique characteristics of intermittent discontinuance,some inconsistent,neutral,and conflicting constructs specific to intermittent discontinuance are also identified and will enrich current theoretical understanding to IS theories,and expectation-confirmation theory and social influence theory in particular.In addition,this study contributes to smart health device industry by providing theoretical and practical guidance for the efficient development and operation of eHealth programs.