Individual Factors that Influence the Acceptance of Mobile Health Apps: The Role of Age, Gender, and Personality Traits

Abstract

Mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are aimed to help people in the management of their lifestyle or a particular disease. The main goal of these apps is to improve health outcomes, through consumers’ active self-management and involvement in healthcare. In the last years, this type of technology has been attracting the interest of researchers and consumers. mHealth apps can have an important impact in peoples’ lives as they may create early habits for monitoring their health through technology, which may be essential to use mHealth over time. The use of this self-management health technology is particularly relevant for elders, as these apps offer them the possibility to manage their health with autonomy. However, some resistance can characterize the acceptance of use of technology by elders. For that reason, it seems important to understand how user’s behaviors are influenced by personal characteristics, preferably before they reach the elderly stage of life. The present study explored the main effects of age, gender, and personality traits on the behavioral intention to use mHealth apps, and the moderating role of age and gender in the relationship between personality traits and the behavioral intention to use mHealth apps on non-users of this type of ICT (N = 273, 18–65 years). Results showed that gender plays a moderating role in the relationship between two personality traits and the behavioral intention to use mHealth apps, namely extraversion and emotional stability. These findings seem relevant to develop and adjust technologies to key characteristics of target groups, and therefore to help people to improve their quality of life.