Tracking Fitness or Sickness - Combining Technology Acceptance and Privacy Research to Investigate the Actual Adoption of Fitness Trackers

Abstract

Personal data is often collected, processed and utilized without the knowledge of the information system’s user. With regard to the enormous value of personalized data for companies as well as consumers’ tendency to unreflectively disclose their data, privacy concerns have been an essential topic for researchers since the mid-1990s. However, established research models of wearable IS-technologies are inadequate to comprehensively investigate the issue of privacy and its effects on acceptance variables. Therefore, the following study aims to empirically validate a research model which considers privacy concerns as a central construct in predicting the actual usage of fitness trackers. The results of our investigation underline the vital role of privacy concerns for the acceptance of fitness trackers and imply that the current providers’ advertising is insufficient in meeting the consumers’ needs.