Determinants and Cross-National Moderators of Wearable Health Tracker Adoption: A Meta-Analysis

Wearable health trackers improve people’s health management and thus are beneficial for social sustainability. Many prior studies have contributed to the knowledge on the determinants of wearable health tracker adoption. However, these studies vary remarkably in focal determinants and countries of data collection, leading to a call for a structured and quantitative review on what determinants are generally important, and whether and how their effects on adoption vary across countries. Therefore, this study performed the first meta-analysis on the determinants and cross-national moderators of wearable health tracker adoption. This meta-analysis accumulated 319 correlations between nine determinants and adoption from 59 prior studies in 18 countries/areas. The meta-analytic average effects of the determinants revealed the generalized effect and the relative importance of each determinant. For example, technological characteristics generally had stronger positive correlations with adoption than consumer characteristics, except for privacy risk. Second, drawing on institutional theory, it was observed that cross-national characteristics regarding socioeconomic status, regulative systems, and cultures could moderate the effects of the determinants on adoption. For instance, the growth rate of gross domestic product decreased the effect of innovativeness on adoption, while regulatory quality and control of corruption could increase this effect