Consumers\u27 acceptance and use of personal health record systems: A theoretical model

Recently, there has been a growing trend towards consumer-based healthcare in which consumers are increasingly becoming partners in their own care. One way of accomplishing this is to provide consumers with access to their health records through the use of Personal Health Record (PHR) systems. In spite of their potential benefits, recent research has shown that PHRs are not yet popular or well known to consumers. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the influences of various personal, behavioral, and environmental factors on the adoption and use of PHR systems by Canadian consumers. Drawing on both the information systems and behavioral healthcare literatures such a model is developed and presented. The proposed model will be validated using a longitudinal design over a period of 16 months involving patients from two local clinics. The study participants will be introduced to an existing PHR system at those clinics. The system will subsequently be made available for their potential use. Users will be surveyed at various points in time regarding their perceptions about the system utilizing both close-ended and open-ended questions. Collected data will be analyzed using structure equation modeling and qualitative data analysis techniques

Consumers\u27 perception of control over online information disclosure. an electronic focus group study

This study focuses on consumers’ perception of control over personal information disclosure on the Internet. Specifically, we examine how consumers perceive controlling their personal data that online companies collect for marketing and customer relationship management purposes. We aim to answer this research problem by clarifying 1) how do consumers express the perception of control over their personal information, and 2) how do consumers perceive controlling their personal information disclosure. Our empirical data is based on four computer-mediated focus group interviews. Our findings show that the perception of control is combined with all stages of personal data utilization: collection, storage and usage. Thus, consumers keep these stages in mind when thinking about their attitudes towards the collection and offering of their personal information. The interviewees also spontaneously mentioned various means with which they control personal data. Perceived trust towards companies, own initiative and permission-based marketing were also combined to the control speech. In summary, the interviewees mostly perceived that they were not controlling their personal data on the Internet. Only when they were talking about control methods of the information disclosure stage, they expressed the perception of control