Commit to Be Fit: Antecedents and Consequences of Goal-Directed Health and Fitness Technology Use

This three-essay dissertation explores the antecedents and consequences of goal-directed health and fitness technology use. My first essay is an interdisciplinary review of consumer health IT research in the IS field and health informatics field. To explore the nature of consumer health IT research, I conducted a thematic analysis using Orlikowski and Iacono's (2001) IT artifact framework. I found that the nominal, proxy, and tool views of IT artifact are the most widely used perspectives when scholars frame how consumer health IT as an IT artifact is designed, deployed, and used. This study summarizes current consumer health IT research trends and suggests promising directions for future work.Inspired by my first essay, my second and third essays focus on extending current knowledge of fitness technologies, a subtype of consumer health IT. In my second essay, I look at fitness technology use behavior from a goal-directed behavior perspective, to ask how fitness technologies help users achieve their fitness goals. Drawing on the concepts of IT affordance and engagement, I propose that actualized fitness technology affordances influence users' cognitive and emotional exercise engagement, leading to fitness goal attainment. The results show that only emotional exercise engagement exerts significant influences on fitness goal attainment and that only actualized self-appraisal affordance and actualized social appraisal affordance significantly impact users' emotional exercise engagement.My third essay focuses on understanding individuals' discontinuance and habitual use of fitness trackers from the perspectives of fitness tracker identity and exercise identity. Drawing on Carter and Grover's (2015) theoretical model of IT identity, this research investigates how the technological, personal, and social aspects of users' fitness technology use experiences shape their fitness tracker identity to influence their fitness tracker use behaviors. My results show that individuals who positively identify with a fitness tracker are less likely to discontinue and more likely to develop habitual use. Further, for the same fitness tracker identity, employees with stronger exercise identity have lower discontinuance intention. Also, for the same fitness tracker identity, employees with more monetary rewards from their organizations have lower discontinuance intention. Moreover, I found various significant antecedents of fitness tracker identity

Role of Social Media in Fostering Effective Health Management

With the widespread use of social media in our mundane life, its applications have been used in various ways in the healthcare area. The more people find information and psychological supports from social media, the more healthcare service organizations