Different Stages of Wearable Health Tracking Adoption & Abandonment: A Survey Study and Analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavioral factors influencing the adoption and abandonment of wearable health trackers through surveys and data analysis, revealing patterns in user motives and usage lifecycle.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of user behavioral factors and motives related to wearable health tracker adoption and abandonment, focusing on real-life usage patterns.

Findings

Identified key user motives for adopting wearables.

Highlighted technology limitations affecting sustained use.

Mapped the typical timeframe before abandonment.

Abstract

Health trackers are widely adopted to support users with daily health and wellness tracking. They can help increase steps taken, enhance sleeping pattern, improve healthy diet, and promote overall health. Despite the growth in the adoption of such technology, their reallife use is still questionable. While some users derive longterm value from their trackers, others face barriers to integrate it into their daily routine. Studies have analysed technical aspects of these barriers. In this study, we analyse the behavioural factors of discouragement and wearable abandonment strictly tied to user habits and living circumstances. A data analysis was conducted in two different studies, one with users posts about wearable sales and the other one was a survey analysis. The two studies were used to analyse the stages of wearable adoption, use and abandonment. Therefore, we mainly focused on users motives to get a wearable tracker and to post it for sale. We extracted insights about user motives, highlighted technology condition and limitations, and timeframe before abandonment. The findings revealed certain user behavioural pattern throughout the wearable use and abandonment.