Between Human and System Agency: Coping with Negative Incidents for Continued Effective Use of Wearables

Despite wearable self-tracking devices’ potential to improve their users’ health, they do not live up to that potential when users discontinue using them after short periods or use them in ineffective ways. To yield positive health effects, wearables must not only be used but also used effectively, that is, in a way that helps achieve the goals for using them. Although the literature on what can help to ensure effective use is conclusive, little is known about the dynamics that are at play once effective use is established. This study adopts a coping theory perspective to examine how negative incidents and the ways users cope with them reinforce or threaten established effective wearable use. The study uses 62 interviews with users of wearables to identify patterns spanning negative incidents, emotional states, ways of coping, and their impact on continued effective use. The study’s findings indicate that, although some ways of coping, such as engaging in the requested behaviors, improved effective use, others, such as adapting the system or venting, had no considerable effects, whereas still others, such as cheating, hampered effective use. The analysis yielded four generative mechanisms—self-control, confirmation, progress, and datafication—that give rise to distinct coping patterns and affect effective use. Two contextual conditions, agency structure and structural barriers, explain users’ selection of (mal)adaptive coping patterns under different generative mechanisms. The study’s findings contribute to the literature that focuses on effective use, coping, and wearables and have implications for practice.

History: Manju Ahuja, Senior Editor; J. J. Po-An Hsieh, Associate Editor.

Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.0541.