AN EXPLORATIVE STUDY ON USERS’ MOTIVATION AND ADOPTION OF WEARABLES TECHNOLOGIES USING THE TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (TAM)

Abstract

"During the last decade, the growth of wearable products such as smartwatches, display glasses, smart tattoos, wrist-bands, and headbands has been increasing and propagated rapidly to mainstream usage, due to their capability for both leisure or fitness and medical data tracking (Celik, Salama, & Eltawil, 2020; Nam & Lee, 2020). Following Wright and Keith’s (2014) conceptualization, wearable technology and wearable devices are phrases that describe electronics that are integrated into clothing and other accessories that can be worn comfortably on the body. The study is based on a cross-sectional design, data being collected from a convenience sample of 261 participants (48 males, 213 females), aged between 18 and 29 years old (M=21.73, SD=3.70) through the following structured questionnaires: Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) and Gratifications of Wearables Technology (Travers, 2015). The study applied the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the motivation (gratifications) of students in the adoption of wearables technologies and actual usage of wearables technologies. The results of the study suggest that both Perceived Ease of Use (r=.279, p<.01) and Perceived Usefulness (r=.386, p<.01) correlate with Actual System Use. Moreover, Perceived Ease of Use positively correlates with Accessibility scale of Gratifications of Wearables Technology (r=.380, p<.01), and Perceived Usefulness positively correlate with all scales of Gratifications of Wearables Technology – Health (r=.427, p<.01), Accessibility (r=.522, p<.01) and Status (r=.262, p<.01). The reality is that the interest in wearables is growing fast, during the last few years, a large variety of wearables has been offered to the market (Seneviratne et al., 2017). A forecast of the wearable industry shows that it will most likely experience important changes within the next few years, wearables being more and more present in mainstream usage. Practical implications of the recent study are discussed as well as some directions for future research in the area."