Toward a Configurational Protection Motivation Theory

Abstract

Protection motivation theory (PMT) has been widely used as a theory to explain users’ adoption of health information technologies. Prior studies based on PMT tend to treat it as a variance model and explain the parallel and independent effects of its constructs. This theorization neglects the original insights about the sequence of decision making and the interdependencies between PMT constructs. To address both of these two issues, this study proposes and tests a configurational protection motivation theory (CPMT). Specifically, different configurations are identified to reflect the potential sequential effects, substitutive effects, and complementary effects. A survey of 204 mobile health service users in China is conducted to test CPMT and the data analysis results confirm the theoretical expectations. This study can contribute to protection motivation theory and e-health research and suggest practitioners to think in a holistic way during service promotion.