Effects of emotional attachment on mobile health-monitoring service usage: An affect transfer perspective

Abstract Mobile health-monitoring services (MMSs) empower patients with chronic illnesses to self-manage their health concerns; however, in practice, many patients become inactive users after employing MMSs for a short time. The reasons for this usage pattern remain unclear. By extending the literature that focuses on the cognitive reasoning behind system usage, our study takes an affect transfer perspective to examine how these patients develop emotional attachment to MMSs that subsequently drives their usage. Drawing on affect transfer theory, we hypothesize that patients’ satisfaction with MMS components influences their emotional attachment to the service through both cognitive and misattribution routines, and that the combined effects of these two routines are contingent on patients’ health rationality. Our hypotheses are tested with survey data collected from 228 patients with chronic illnesses. This study contributes to the mobile health (mHealth) literature by investigating patients’ actual behavior based on their interactions with MMSs from an affect transfer perspective. It also informs service providers of MMSs regarding how to motivate service usage by patients with chronic illnesses by adopting a strategic design.

[1]  Alan D. J. Cooke,et al.  Judgment and decision making. , 1998, Annual review of psychology.

[2]  Keith S. Coulter.  The Effects of Affective Responses to Media Context on Advertising Evaluations , 1998 .

[3]  Tony Norris,et al.  Mobile technologies and the holistic management of chronic diseases , 2008, Health Informatics J..

[4]  D. Blustein,et al.  Contributions of Family Relationship Factors to the Identity Formation Process , 1994 .

[5]  Douglas R. Vogel,et al.  Exploring the inhibitors of online health service use intention: A status quo bias perspective , 2017, Inf. Manag..

[6]  Guy Paré,et al.  Health Care IT: Process, People, Patients and Interdisciplinary Considerations , 2011, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[7]  Yajiong Xue,et al.  Understanding Online Health Information Use: The Case of People with Physical Disabilities , 2017, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[8]  Anna Gunnthorsdottir,et al.  The Persuasive Effects of Emotive Visual Imagery: Superficial Manipulation or the Product of Passionate Reason? , 2000 .

[9]  Ping Zhang,et al.  The Affective Response Model: A Theoretical Framework of Affective Concepts and Their Relationships in the ICT Context , 2013, MIS Q..

[10]  Lawrence J. Marks,et al.  Toward a Cognitive Structure Conceptualization of Product Familiarity , 1981 .

[11]  Dimos Mastrogiannis,et al.  Telemonitoring in Chronic Heart Failure: A Systematic Review , 2012, Cardiology research and practice.

[12]  Thomas Bodenheimer,et al.  Improving primary care for patients with chronic illness: the chronic care model, Part 2. , 2002, JAMA.

[13]  Henry Been-Lirn Duh,et al.  A study on Singaporean women's acceptance of using mobile phones to seek health information , 2011, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[14]  C. W. Park,et al.  Beyond fit and attitude: The effect of emotional attachment on consumer responses to brand extensions , 2008 .

[15]  Terence A. Shimp.  Attitude toward the AD as a Mediator of Consumer Brand Choice , 1981 .

[16]  Douglas B. Grisaffe,et al.  Antecedents of emotional attachment to brands , 2011 .

[17]  J. Carroll,et al.  Who Uses Mobile Phone Health Apps and Does Use Matter? A Secondary Data Analytics Approach , 2017, Journal of medical Internet research.

[18]  Shahriar Akter,et al.  Service quality of mHealth platforms: development and validation of a hierarchical model using PLS , 2010, Electron. Mark..

[19]  Barbara H Wixom,et al.  A Theoretical Integration of User Satisfaction and Technology Acceptance , 2005, Inf. Syst. Res..

[20]  Yingkang Gu,et al.  Festival Tourists’ Emotion, Perceived Value, and Behavioral Intentions: A Test of the Moderating Effect of Festivalscape , 2011 .

[21]  Yongqiang Sun,et al.  The privacy-personalization paradox in mHealth services acceptance of different age groups , 2016, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[22]  Uma Kumar,et al.  Predicting mobile health adoption behaviour: A demand side perspective , 2014 .

[23]  Steven P. Brown,et al.  Antecedents and Consequences of Attitude toward the Ad: A Meta-analysis , 1992 .

[24]  R. Paternoster,et al.  Rational Choice, Agency and Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making: The Short and Long-Term Consequences of Making Good Choices , 2009 .

[25]  E. Hirschman.  Consumers and Their Animal Companions , 1994 .

[26]  Yongqiang Sun,et al.  The dark side of elderly acceptance of preventive mobile health services in China , 2013, Electron. Mark..

[27]  H. Kuo,et al.  A mobile telephone-based interactive self-care system improves asthma control , 2010, European Respiratory Journal.

[28]  D A Redelmeier,et al.  Understanding patients' decisions. Cognitive and emotional perspectives. , 1993, JAMA.

[29]  B. Wansink,et al.  Factors Related to Sustained Use of a Free Mobile App for Dietary Self-Monitoring With Photography and Peer Feedback: Retrospective Cohort Study , 2014, Journal of medical Internet research.

[30]  Reeva Lederman,et al.  How Trust Is Formed in Online Health Communities: A Process Perspective , 2014, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[31]  Bin Wang,et al.  How attachment influences users' willingness to donate to content creators in social media: A socio-technical systems perspective , 2017, Inf. Manag..

[32]  Olesya Govorun,et al.  An inkblot for attitudes: affect misattribution as implicit measurement. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[33]  Anol Bhattacherjee,et al.  Understanding Information Systems Continuance: An Expectation-Confirmation Model , 2001, MIS Q..

[34]  G. Mcdougall,et al.  Customer satisfaction with services: putting perceived value into the equation , 2000 .

[35]  Atreyi Kankanhalli,et al.  Investigating user resistance to information systems implementation: a status quo bias perspective , 2009 .

[36]  Samy Belaid,et al.  The role of attachment in building consumer‐brand relationships: an empirical investigation in the utilitarian consumption context , 2011 .

[37]  Douglas R. Vogel,et al.  Toward a theory of perceived benefits, affective commitment, and continuance intention in social virtual worlds: cultural values (indulgence and individualism) matter , 2015, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[38]  H. Aarts,et al.  There is a fire burning in my heart: The role of causal attribution in affect transfer , 2011, Cognition & emotion.

[39]  Manfred Tscheligi,et al.  Mobile attachment causes and consequences for emotional bonding with mobile phones , 2014, CHI.

[40]  Mihail Cocosila,et al.  Adoption of mobile ICT for health promotion: an empirical investigation , 2010, Electron. Mark..

[41]  Arun Rai,et al.  Understanding Determinants of Consumer Mobile Health Usage Intentions, Assimilation, and Channel Preferences , 2013, Journal of medical Internet research.

[42]  S. West,et al.  Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions. , 1994 .

[43]  Shahriar Akter,et al.  Trustworthiness in mHealth information services: An assessment of a hierarchical model with mediating and moderating effects using partial least squares (PLS) , 2011, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[44]  William A. Phillips,et al.  Does familiarity affect transfer from an iconic to a short-term memory? , 1971 .

[45]  Deepak Malhotra,et al.  NORMAL ACTS OF IRRATIONAL TRUST: MOTIVATED ATTRIBUTIONS AND THE TRUST DEVELOPMENT PROCESS , 2004 .

[46]  Chiew Tong Lau,et al.  Remote health monitoring using mobile phones and Web services. , 2010, Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association.

[47]  Timothy W. Smith,et al.  Irrational beliefs and the arousal of emotional distress. , 1984 .

[48]  Reginald A. Bruce,et al.  Decision-Making Style: The Development and Assessment of a New Measure , 1995 .

[49]  Ambady Ramachandran,et al.  Reinforcement of adherence to prescription recommendations in Asian Indian diabetes patients using short message service (SMS)--a pilot study. , 2011, The Journal of the Association of Physicians of India.

[50]  J. M. C. Hernandez,et al.  The importance of advertising skepticism for brand extension appeals , 2019, Psychology & Marketing.

[51]  G. Bower.  Mood and memory. , 1981, The American psychologist.

[52]  J. Edwards,et al.  Methods for integrating moderation and mediation: a general analytical framework using moderated path analysis. , 2007, Psychological methods.

[53]  S. Wartman,et al.  When competent patients make irrational choices. , 1990, The New England journal of medicine.

[54]  R. Hill,et al.  The Homeless in America: An Examination of Possessions and Consumption Behaviors , 1990 .

[55]  Eric W. T. Ngai,et al.  Understanding mobile health service use: An investigation of routine and emergency use intentions , 2019, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[56]  Mika Immonen,et al.  The value of human interaction in service channels , 2018, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[57]  Henry L. Tosi,et al.  Contingency Theory: Some Suggested Directions , 1984 .

[58]  Doo-Hee Lee,et al.  Do online brand communities help build and maintain relationships with consumers? A network theory approach , 2011 .

[59]  Hongwei Du,et al.  Toward a better understanding of behavioral intention and system usage constructs , 2012, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[60]  Adam P. Vrechopoulos,et al.  Consumer-Retailer Emotional Attachment: Some Antecedents and the Moderating Role of Attachment Anxiety , 2010 .

[61]  Evette Ludman,et al.  Influence of Patient Attachment Style on Self-care and Outcomes in Diabetes , 2004, Psychosomatic medicine.

[62]  Zhenbin Yang,et al.  Expectations of patient-centred care: Investigating IS-related and other antecedents , 2017, Inf. Manag..

[63]  C. Ng,et al.  Text messaging reminders to reduce non-attendance in chronic disease follow-up: a clinical trial. , 2009, The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

[64]  W. Katon,et al.  The patient-provider relationship: attachment theory and adherence to treatment in diabetes. , 2001, The American journal of psychiatry.

[65]  C. W. Park,et al.  The Ties That Bind: Measuring the Strength of Consumers’ Emotional Attachments to Brands , 2005 .

[66]  Rosa M. Rodríguez,et al.  Perceived relationship quality and post‐purchase perceived value , 2007 .

[67]  Rocci Luppicini,et al.  Exploring the Effect of mHealth Technologies on Communication and Information Sharing in a Pediatric Critical Care Unit: A Case Study , 2011, Int. J. Heal. Inf. Syst. Informatics.

[68]  Heeseok Lee,et al.  Antecedents of Use-Continuance in Information Systems: Toward an Inegrative View , 2008, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[69]  C. Fornell,et al.  Evaluating Structural Equation Models with Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error , 1981 .

[70]  Lemuria Carter,et al.  Exploring User Acceptance of a Text-message Base Health Intervention among Young African Americans , 2015, AIS Trans. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[71]  Erin Willis,et al.  Online Health Communities and Chronic Disease Self-Management , 2017, Health communication.

[72]  Mehwish Waheed,et al.  Emotional attachment and multidimensional self-efficacy: extension of innovation diffusion theory in the context of eBook reader , 2015, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[73]  Shahriar Akter,et al.  Modelling the impact of mHealth service quality on satisfaction, continuance and quality of life , 2013 .

[74]  Wynne W. Chin.  The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. , 1998 .

[75]  Chung-Yu Wang,et al.  Service quality, perceived value, corporate image, and customer loyalty in the context of varying levels of switching costs , 2010 .

[76]  A. Tversky,et al.  Prospect theory: analysis of decision under risk , 1979 .

[77]  V. Ostojić,et al.  Improving asthma control through telemedicine: a study of short-message service. , 2005, Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association.

[78]  I. Ajzen,et al.  The Influence of Attitudes on Behavior , 2005 .

[79]  Kevin Lane Keller,et al.  Consumer Evaluations of Brand Extensions , 1990 .

[80]  Paul Benjamin Lowry,et al.  Understanding Patients’ Compliance Behavior in a Mobile Healthcare System: The Role of Trust and Planned Behavior , 2014, ICIS.

[81]  Lionel P. Robert,et al.  Emotional Attachment, Performance, and Viability in Teams Collaborating with Embodied Physical Action (EPA) Robots , 2018, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[82]  A. Ahuvia,et al.  Some antecedents and outcomes of brand love , 2006 .

[83]  Chirk Jenn Ng,et al.  The use of text messaging to improve attendance in primary care: a randomized controlled trial. , 2006, Family practice.

[84]  Ailsa Kolsaker,et al.  Mobile advertising: The influence of emotional attachment to mobile devices on consumer receptiveness , 2009 .

[85]  Mohammad M. Rahman,et al.  Cultivating group-oriented travel behaviour to major events: assessing the importance of customer-perceived value, enduring event involvement and attitude towards the host destination , 2015 .

[86]  Jeen-Su Lim,et al.  The role of affect in attitude formation: A classical conditioning approach , 1998 .

[87]  Matthias Ehrgott,et al.  Rationality in supplier selection decisions: The effect of the buyer's national task environment , 2012 .

[88]  N. Acur,et al.  Examining Proactive Strategic Decision-Making Flexibility in New Product Development , 2012 .

[89]  Qing Zhu,et al.  Health information privacy concerns, antecedents, and information disclosure intention in online health communities , 2017, Inf. Manag..

[90]  J. Reeve,et al.  Understanding motivation and emotion , 1991 .

[91]  C. Rusbult,et al.  Should I stay or should I go? A dependence model of breakups. , 1992 .

[92]  Pavlos A. Vlachos,et al.  Corporate Social Performance and Consumer-Retailer Emotional Attachment: The Moderating Role of Individual Traits , 2012 .

[93]  Jeannine S. Schiller,et al.  Multiple Chronic Conditions Among US Adults: A 2012 Update , 2014, Preventing chronic disease.

[94]  Ana Tajadura-Jiménez,et al.  Auditory-Induced Emotion: A Neglected Channel for Communication in Human-Computer Interaction , 2008, Affect and Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction.

[95]  Hongki Kim,et al.  What If Your Avatar Looks Like You? Dual-Congruity Perspectives for Avatar Use , 2011, MIS Q..

[96]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  Cognitive biases in moral judgments that affect political behavior , 2009, Synthese.

[97]  R. Dale Wilson,et al.  Emotional Feelings and Attitude toward the Advertisement: The Roles of Brand Familarity and Repetition , 1988 .

[98]  John P. Meyer,et al.  Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and test of a three-component conceptualization. , 1993 .

[99]  Nima Kordzadeh,et al.  Communicating Personal Health Information in Virtual Health Communities: An Integration of Privacy Calculus Model and Affective Commitment , 2017, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[100]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences , 1979 .

[101]  Xitong Guo,et al.  UNDERSTANDING THE ACCEPTANCE OF MOBILE HEALTH SERVICES: A COMPARISON AND INTEGRATION OF ALTERNATIVE MODELS , 2013 .

[102]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Integrating Service Quality with System and Information Quality: An Empirical Test in the E-Service Context , 2013, MIS Q..

[103]  B. Khatoon.  The use of a mobile app to motivate evidence-based oral hygiene behaviour , 2015, BDJ.

[104]  Matthew Thomson.  Human Brands: Investigating Antecedents to Consumers’ Strong Attachments to Celebrities , 2006 .

[105]  M. Sobel.  Asymptotic Confidence Intervals for Indirect Effects in Structural Equation Models , 1982 .

[106]  M. Sarstedt,et al.  ESTIMATING MODERATING EFFECTS IN PLS-SEM AND PLSc-SEM: INTERACTION TERM GENERATION*DATA TREATMENT , 2018, Journal of Applied Structural Equation Modeling.

[107]  Viswanath Venkatesh,et al.  Predicting Different Conceptualizations of System Use: The Competing Roles of Behavioral Intention, Facilitating Conditions, and Behavioral Expectation , 2008, MIS Q..

[108]  Kenny K. N. Chow,et al.  Place attachment and place identity: First-year undergraduates making the transition from home to university , 2008 .

[109]  Matt Germonprez,et al.  Identification-interaction-innovation: A phenomenological basis for an information services view , 2008 .

[110]  J. Bowlby.  The making & breaking of affectional bonds , 1979 .

[111]  A. Gustafsson,et al.  The Effects of Customer Satisfaction, Relationship Commitment Dimensions, and Triggers on Customer Retention , 2005 .

[112]  Shahriar Akter,et al.  Development and validation of an instrument to measure user perceived service quality of mHealth , 2013, Inf. Manag..

[113]  Cindy Hazan,et al.  Pair bonds as attachments: Evaluating the evidence. , 1999 .