Are You Coping or Copping Out? Wearable Users’ Information Privacy Perspective

With the advent of wearable devices, we leave a huge digital footprint with every step taken in our daily lives. Though these devices positively impact health and lifestyle of users, violations of health information privacy have become ubiquitous, diverting academic attention towards these issues. This study focuses on understanding the coping behavior of fitness tracker users when confronted with the fear appeal of data privacy breach. A survey is conducted with 225 fitness tracker users using an adapted multi-item scale. A conceptual model drawn from Extended Parallel Process Model, privacy concern, and coping behavior literature is tested using SEM. The study shows, privacy concern has a strong influence on an individual’s threat perception, affecting one’s choice of coping behavior. The novelty of the study lies in the understanding of the impact of fear over loss of one’s health-data privacy and the resulting shift in the attitude towards the technology itself