Technological innovation and increasing social demand are further expanding the marketability and future growth potential of the digital healthcare industry. At the center of it is a wearable healthcare device. Therefore, this study focuses on the 'he...
Technological innovation and increasing social demand are further expanding the marketability and future growth potential of the digital healthcare industry. At the center of it is a wearable healthcare device. Therefore, this study focuses on the 'health' perspective, which is the direction of wearable healthcare devices. To this end, we will analyze how the service quality factor of the wearable healthcare device affects health beliefs and health behavior.
This study conducted an online survey of the public using wearable devices. A valid sample of 303 copies was secured through the reference selection, limited to wearing wearable device for at least 1 year and at least 5 days a week. The survey was conducted after securing the construct validity of the items through a preliminary survey. Data processing was performed using the SPSS 23.0 program by frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. The significance level was set to .05.
The research results are summarized as follows.
First, only certainty among the sub-factors of wearable healthcare device service quality, such as responsiveness, certainty, and empathy, was found to have a significant effect on health beliefs. This means that health-related beliefs are strengthened when users are confident in the device's expertise, reliability, and safety. In addition, the results of previous studies reconfirm that certainty acts as the most important factor in service quality evaluation. In order to successfully use wearable healthcare devices and strengthen users' health beliefs, strategies to increase certainty among service quality are needed. It is necessary for users to establish trust in devices and services by analyzing professional data, ensuring safety and accuracy, and establishing a reliable feedback system. This enhancement of certainty is believed to act as a reinforcing factor in the psychological foundation that promotes health behavior practice beyond simple technology satisfaction.
Second, it was found that only certainty among the sub-factors of wearable healthcare device service quality, among reactivity, certainty, and empathy, had a significant effect on health behavior. When a user perceives that the health information obtained through the wearable device is reliable and stably managed data, the motivation leading to actual health behavior is strengthened. Therefore, wearable healthcare service providers should increase user confidence by providing accurate and verified health data, strengthening security and personal information protection, intervening by professionals, and establishing a reliable feedback system. This study is of academic significance in that it empirically added the importance of confidence-based on trust to factors such as usefulness and self-efficacy dealt with in existing technology acceptance models and health belief models. It suggests that certainty-centered quality management and user trust-building strategies can directly contribute to improving health behavior.
Third, among the sub-factors of health beliefs, such as current health status, future health status, and health interest, the current health status and health interest had a statistically significant effect on health behavior. This means that the more positively an individual perceives his or her current health or pays high attention to health, the higher the likelihood of actually practicing healthy behavior. The results of this study are of academic significance in that they empirically show that subjective health awareness and emotional health interest are important psychological drivers of health behavior practice in addition to cognitive factors, which are major variables of the health belief model.