Trust and elderly users' continuance intention regarding mobile health services: the contingent role of health and technology anxieties
Information Technology & People
ISSN: 0959-3845
Article publication date: 4 January 2021
Issue publication date: 17 January 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Mobile health (mHealth) services are considered an important means of relieving the problems of the aging population. The efficiency of mHealth services can be enhanced by engaging more elderly users and guaranteeing their continued use. However, limited attention has been directed toward investigating elderly users' continuance intention regarding mHealth services. The purpose of this paper is to explain elderly users' continuance intention by investigating the contingent role of technology anxiety and health anxiety on affective trust and cognitive trust.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data were collected from 232 elderly users to verify the research model and hypotheses based on structural equation modeling (SEM).
Findings
This study revealed that both affective and cognitive trust enhance elderly users' continuance intention regarding their use of mHealth services. Health anxiety strengthens the effect of cognitive trust but weakens the effect of affective trust with regard to continuance intention. Furthermore, technology anxiety strengthens the effect of affective trust but not the effect of cognitive trust with regard to continuance intention.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to examine elderly users' continuance intention regarding mHealth services use from the perspective of affective and cognitive trust, thus enriching the extant literature on the use of mHealth services. Additionally, this study sheds light on the contingent effects of technology anxiety and health anxiety on affective and cognitive trust, which have been neglected by previous research.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the editors for their guidance and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions. This study was partially funded by the National Natural Science of China (72001094, 72071054, 71531007, 71871074, 71871073), and Philosophy and Social Science Fund of Education Department of Jiangsu Province (2020SJA0875).Funding: This work was supported by the Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research of Chinese Ministry of Education [grant number 19JZD021].
Citation
Meng, F., Guo, X., Peng, Z., Ye, Q. and Lai, K.-H. (2022), "Trust and elderly users' continuance intention regarding mobile health services: the contingent role of health and technology anxieties", Information Technology & People, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 259-280. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-11-2019-0602
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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