Towards a Wearable Technology Model

Abstract

This purpose of this study is to develop a wearable technology model (WTM) by identifying key determinants of wearable technology adoption (comfort, safety, privacy, data accuracy, portability, and design, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use). Wearable technologies (WT) are Internet enabled technologies that are rapidly emerging and gaining popularity. WT refers to clothing or accessories that are enabled with minicomputers and sensors and are meant to be worn on the human body for an extended period of time to enhance their daily lives. Results indicate the most important factors that users care about when intending to use wearable technology ranked from most to least important are design, data accuracy, portability, comfortability, PU, PEOU, safety, and privacy of the device to be worn. This study develops the WTM, a novel model that is tested and validated specifically to examine user’s intentions to adopt WT, and to extend the traditional technology acceptance models. This study proves the WTM can be applied successfully to examine user’ s intentions to adopt WT.