Examining the Role of Technology Anxiety and Health Anxiety on Elderly Users’ Continuance Intention for Mobile Health Services Use

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) is considered to be an important means of releasing the aging population problem. The efficiency of mHealth service can be increased by incorporating more elderly users and guaranteeing their continued use. However, limited attention has been directed toward investigating elderly users’ continuance intention for mHealth service use. Drawing upon the trust theory, we investigated elderly users’ characteristics, i.e. health anxiety and technology anxiety, to explain continuance intention. Survey data were collected comprising 261 valid responses to validate the research model and hypotheses. The results revealed that both cognitive and affective trust enhance continuance intention of mHealth services use. Health anxiety strengthens the effect of cognitive trust, but weakens the effect of affective trust, on the continuance intention. Furthermore, technology anxiety strengthens the effect of affective trust, but not that of cognitive trust, on the continuance intention. The limitations of our study and the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.