Practice and Policy Abstract Popular fitness technologies such as Fitbit, Strava, MyFitnessPal, and Apple Fitness+ provide users with information enabling them to compare their activity to that of other exercisers they have added to their app. However, different people will interpret this social comparison information in different ways. This study provides one explanation as to why social comparison information provided by fitness technologies leads to differing performance self-esteem outcomes for exercisers. What we find is that exercisers holding a harmonious passion for their exercise activity can interpret fitness technology-facilitated social comparison information in an adaptive way; that is, to see better others as a state they can obtain and worse others as evidence of their success. Conversely, the obsessively passionate are prone to interpreting such information in maladaptive ways; that is, to see better performing others as evidence of their own failure and other’s poor performance as a sign that they will also falter. These maladaptive interpretations may lead to psychological harm (e.g., reduced self-esteem and well-being). Stemming from these findings, we suggest fitness technology developers consider designing their apps to adapt to exerciser’s characteristics, such as passion, to minimize the negative effects of fitness technology-facilitated social comparison information.

In the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and data-hungry applications, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) offer a way for individuals to limit data collection and processing by these applications. Yet, the adoption of PETs remains low and user-focused research on adoption predictors is limited. In this work, we use the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) to study the adoption of five categories of personal PETs: private browsing, privacy-focused web browsers, privacy browser extensions, secure (encrypted) messaging, and secure (encrypted) email. Our results confirmed the significant role of social influence and habit as predictors of adoption of PETs but also showed that the adoption of these five categories of PETs was not driven by the same set of factors. These differences call for more contextualized research to study the adoption of PETs and raise the potential issue of the limits of the generalizability of UTAUT2. The discovery of the lack of support for such an established theory also creates the potential for breaking new ground through the development of new theories of adoption that are better suited to the emerging world of technologies including PETs.

Hypercompetitive mobile app stores are characterized by rapid innovation and intense competition. App firms must vie for temporary competitive advantage through competitive actions such as releasing product improvements. We study how competitive indicators influence a particular competitive action—app updates—in a mobile game app market. Our results reveal that app firms take action to improve or sustain their temporary competitive advantage, updating their apps when there are opportunities to capitalize on popularity (e.g., rank and rating volume are increasing) and when their apps’ advantages are threatened (e.g., customer ratings are decreasing). We also find that app updates are released in response to competitors’ actions—specifically, when competitors update their apps and new competitors enter ranking lists. Moreover, our findings show that app firms release app updates when an app’s customer rating volume is increasing or when an app firm’s portfolio of game apps is less diverse, relative to its competitors. We conduct additional analyses that show that older app firms are responsive to more competitive indicators than younger ones and major updates are primarily used to respond to serious threats to apps’ competitive positions. Overall, our results indicate that app updates are competitive actions used to improve or sustain temporary advantage when competitive indicators reveal opportunities to improve or threats to apps’ competitive positions.

Identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) is a cloud security service to which companies can outsource the identity and access management (IAM) functions that administer their employee's access to organizational resources. Engaging with the information systems (IS) privacy literature, our qualitative analysis develops a framework for an organizational privacy calculus that informs French organizational consumers' decisions to pursue IDaaS solutions. We collect data from employees of a multinational IDaaS provider operating in Europe but headquartered in the US. Our case study reveals the organizational privacy calculus associated with transferring control of a primary security control to a multinational cloud service provider.

Vaccine hesitancy is the delay or refusal of vaccination when vaccines are available. Over the last decade, many reports have suggested that the proliferation of vaccine disinformation and misinformation on social media has aggravated the vaccine-hesitancy problem. Access to vaccine dis(mis)information on social media is deemed partly responsible for the resurfacing of vaccine-preventable diseases (e.g., measles). Although studies have examined social media dis(mis)information, including that related to vaccines, the newsfeed algorithm, which determines the content social media users see, has received scant attention in the literature. We examine how people's perceptions of the fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAT) of the Facebook newsfeed algorithm influence their intention to vaccinate their children. We find that people's perceptions of the Facebook newsfeed algorithm's FAT increase their negative attitudes toward vaccination (fairness and transparency). However, they decrease users' perceptions of antivaccination norms on Facebook (fairness, accountability, and transparency). Negative attitudes toward vaccination decrease the intention to vaccinate, as do perceptions of Facebook antivaccination norms. Our findings demonstrate that to decrease the effectiveness of vaccine dis(mis)information, it is critical to educate the public about how social media newsfeed algorithms make content-display decisions.

The pervasive use of social media platforms in our daily lives has encouraged the self-disclosure of personal information. These self-disclosure behaviors engender numerous risks such as identity theft or cyberbullying. More than ever, it is important to understand the disclosure decision process to prevent harm. Self-disclosure decisions are influenced by individual differences and situational cues. Yet, research so far has neglected the influence of personality traits, emotions, and motives separately and together on self-disclosure. To address this gap, this short paper offers a framework for future research. Investigating such relationships will enable to design interventions to discourage oversharing of potentially damaging personal information.

The aim of fitness technologies, a combination of wearables and associated applications, is to support users??? health and fitness regimes. The market for fitness technologies continues to increase, and the technologies themselves are quickly advancing. However, it is unclear how effective fitness technologies are in generating wellness outcomes, and there is concern regarding frequent discontinuance behaviors. Accordingly, we develop a model to explain how the perception that fitness technologies satisfy or frustrate users??? basic psychological needs (BPNs) in exercise mediates the relationships between the users??? goals for fitness technology use and psychological well-being and continuance. We find that users who start using fitness technologies for enjoyment, challenge, revitalization, affiliation, or to make positive improvements to their health or strength and endurance, are more likely to report that the fitness technologies are satisfying their BPNs, whereas users who start using them for stress management, social recognition, competition, or weight management are more likely to report BPNs frustration. Notably, users who start using fitness technologies for enjoyment and to make positive improvements to their health or strength and endurance are less likely to report BPNs frustration, and use driven by social recognition goals can decrease BPNs satisfaction. BPNs satisfaction is associated with both increased psychological well-being and continuance, whereas BPNs frustration is negatively associated with both. Fitness technologies must thus be perceived by users to satisfy their BPNs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) in exercise to ensure positive outcomes from use.

Exchanging social support on online health communities (OHCs) can be beneficial to people's health, but the OHC characteristics that promote environments in which users feel socially supported are understudied. We develop a model that examines the mediating influence of OHC cohesiveness, altruism, and universality on the relationships between active and passive use and received OHC social support. Our findings indicate that social support can be derived from both active and passive use of the OHC. Although active use can directly stimulate received OHC social support, the relationship between passive use and social support is fully mediated by OHC group dynamics.

Reward‐based crowdfunding platforms – in which campaigns exchange rewards for financial backing to develop a product or service – are one of the fastest‐growing segments of the crowdfunding industry. We use an extension of social exchange theory (SET) called the resource theory of social exchange (RTSE) to examine resource exchanges through rewards on Kickstarter. A resource exchange occurs when a project backer and project creator exchange money (ie, financial backing) for a reward (eg, a thank you or a t‐shirt). A project creator can develop a reward portfolio that contains various types of resources, which in the RTSE are categorised as love, status, information, money, goods and services. Our study provides a comprehensive examination of resource exchange on a major reward‐based crowd funding platform, answering the call to investigate the effects of a key element of such platforms – rewards. We find that the types of resources project creators include in the reward portfolios they offer should be carefully considered. Specifically, our results indicate it is more beneficial to offer rewards that contain universal and concrete resources (eg, goods, services) than resources that are particularistic and symbolic (eg, love, status). However, the positive effect of offering universal and concrete resources as rewards is diminished as the fundraising goal is increased, which suggests that the optimal design of the reward portfolio is contingent on other characteristics of the campaign. Moreover, our findings reveal that while it is advantageous to offer more rewards, it is disadvantageous to offer too many different types of resources across those rewards. Overall, our study adds depth to the understanding of resource exchange in reward‐based crowdfunding and provides practical insight into how to design reward portfolios.

Android access notifications are presented to users to obtain permission to access data and services on smartphones. The number of 'unsafe' apps in the Android marketplaces underscores the importance of understanding what factors influence whether users engage in more effortful systematic processing of access notifications. We propose a multiple-motive heuristic-systematic model to examine how different motives impact users' processing modes. We find that the need to be accurate in making decisions (accuracy), the desire to defend preferred positions (defense), and social pressure from others (impression) influence how users process Android access notifications, and they do so in different ways.

PurposeMost students are considered digital natives and are presumably equipped to handle extensive technology use. However, online learning turns students into involuntary telecommuters when it is the primary modality. The prevailing trends of online learning, digital socialization, telehealth and other online services, combined with remote work has increased students' reliance on information and communications technologies (ICTs) for all purposes, which may be overwhelming. We examine how technology overload strains the ability of online learning to meet students' basic psychological needs (BPNs), which can decrease positive outcomes such as academic enjoyment and personal performance.Design/methodology/approachData was collected via an online survey of 542 university students and the proposed model was tested using partial least squares (PLS) regression.FindingsWe find that technology overload can diminish the positive relationship between online learning intensity and BPNs satisfaction, which is alarming because BPNs satisfaction is critical to students' positive experiences. Moreover, we find that technology overload and lack of technology experience can directly drive BPNs frustration, which decreases positive outcomes and increases academic anxiety.Originality/valueWe extend a theoretical framework for telecommuting to examine online learning. Additionally, we consider the role of technology overload and experience both as drivers and as moderators of students' BPNs satisfaction and frustration in online learning. Our results provide valuable insights that can inform efforts to rebalance the deployment of ICTs to facilitate online educational experiences.

As personal health information is digitized and entrusted to healthcare professionals and the technology vendors that manage health information systems (e.g., electronic health records), questions continue to arise regarding how this information is used and protected. By understanding what factors shape people’s health information privacy concerns (HIPCs), organizations can better manage reactions and concerns regarding the use of new technologies and guidance can be produced to help people better protect their health information. We conduct a mixed methods study to examine antecedents to HIPC and find that individuals’ characteristics, perceptions, and experiences all play important roles in shaping HIPC. We also show that users who report high HIPC are less likely to allow their health information to be included in an electronic health record system. The study is conducted using Irish respondents and thus provides a European perspective from a country in which health information systems are not yet widespread.

In the digital era, it is increasingly important to understand how privacy decisions are made because information is frequently perceived as a commodity that is mismanaged. The preponderance of privacy literature focuses on individual-level information privacy concern and personal self-disclosure decisions. We propose that a more versatile multilevel description is required to enable exploration of complex privacy decisions that involve co-owned (i.e., group) information in increasingly sophisticated digital environments. We define the concepts of group and individual information privacy, "we-privacy" and "I-privacy" respectively, as the ability of an individual or group to construct, regulate, and apply the rules for managing their information and interaction with others. We develop the theory of multilevel information privacy (TMIP), which uses the theory of communication privacy management and the developmental theory of privacy as foundations for a social rule-based (i.e., normative) process of making privacy decisions that evolve over time with experience. The TMIP contributes to the privacy literature by drawing from prominent social psychology theories of group behavior (i.e., social identity and self-categorization theories) to explain how privacy decisions can be made by individuals or groups (i.e., social units) or social units acting as members of a particular group. We contend that technology complicates the privacy decision-making process by adding unique environmental characteristics that can influence the social identity assumed for a particular privacy decision, the estimation of the cost-benefit components of the privacy calculus, and the application and evolution of the norms that define the rules for information and interaction management. We discuss the implications of the TMIP for information systems research and provide a research agenda.

Wearable devices and applications (apps) that offer a variety of features intended to support exercisers have flooded the marketplace. Organismic integration theory (OIT) proposes that motivations to exercise can vary along a spectrum of self-determination. To best serve exercisers and assist organizations that are developing and promoting fitness technologies, we need a better understanding of how individuals' exercise motivations influence their fitness technology feature set use. We also need to determine the impact of fitness technology features on enhancing or undermining wellness outcomes such as subjective vitality. Our results suggest that almost every subtype of exerciser, where the subtype is defined by OIT motivations toward exercise, has a unique use profile. Our findings also suggest that the social interaction and data management features of current fitness technologies show promise in assisting well-being outcomes, but only for the more self-determined and amotivated subtypes of exercisers. This leads us to suggest that providing every type of exerciser the motivational support that best fits their motivational profile may not be a trivial task, but it ultimately may be necessary for fitness technologies to be universally useful in supporting wellness outcomes.

Fitness technologies are a prominent example of the societal trend towards personal informatics. These technologies pair devices that have various embedded sensors with one or more apps to allow for the collection, analysis, socialization, and management of individuals' health and wellness data. We have limited insight into what drives the use of fitness technologies or how they may contribute to wellness outcomes. To address this gap, our study examines how exercise goals are related to fitness technology feature set use and how the use is associated with a measure of the exercisers' psychological well‐being (ie, subjective vitality). We find that intrinsic exercise goals (eg, enjoyment or competence) are associated with the use of features that allow users to collect, analyse, and inform their exercise progress. Body‐focused extrinsic exercise goals (eg, appearance) are also associated with the use of such features but are negatively associated with features that socialize exercise. The social extrinsic exercise goal is associated with the use of more controlling features that can provide external pressure from the technology or other people. The social features of fitness technologies are associated with higher levels of subjective vitality. Our findings indicate that exercisers who have goals where measuring progress may be desired (eg, losing weight and training for a marathon) are more likely to be drawn to the data management aspects of fitness technologies, whereas using fitness technologies to socialize exercise may add an element of enjoyment that is attractive to some users and may lead to increased well‐being.

Online social networks (OSNs) offer a stream of information that readily provides comparison opportunities, often resulting in feelings of envy. Two factors that drive OSN-situational envy (OSN-SE) are a user’s personality and needs. Leveraging the five-factor model of personality and uses and gratifications theory, we explore how personality traits and OSN use affect OSN-SE. Data from 625 survey responses indicate that Facebook users experience greater OSN-SE when they exhibit neuroticism and use Facebook to gratify needs to gather information, seek attention, or pass time, suggesting that envy-prone users should use OSN for specific purposes and avoid passive pursuits.

Mechanisms for collecting unstructured feedback (i.e., text comments) from patients of healthcare providers have become commonplace, but analysis techniques to examine such feedback have not been frequently applied in this domain. To fill this gap, we apply a text mining methodology to a large set of textual feedback of physicians by their patients and relate the textual commentary to their numeric ratings. While perceptions of healthcare service quality in the form of numeric ratings are easy to aggregate, freeform textual commentary presents more challenges to extracting useful information. Our methodology explores aggregation of the textual commentary using a topic analysis procedure (i.e., latent Dirichlet allocation) and a sentiment tool (i.e., Diction). We then explore how the extracted topic areas and expressed sentiments relate to the physicians' quantitative ratings of service quality from both patients and other physicians. We analyze 23,537 numeric ratings plus textual feedback provided by patients of 3,712 physicians who have also been recommended by other physicians, and determine process quality satisfaction is an important driver of patient perceived quality, whereas clinical quality better reflects physician perceived quality. Our findings lead us to suggest that to maximize the usefulness of online reviews of physicians, potential patients should parse them for particular quality elements they wish to assess and interpret them within the scope of those quality elements. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

People using online social networks (OSNs) exchange information through posts of multimedia content, which may contain others' information. Our study contributes to the privacy literature by examining individuals' perceptions of the risk their OSN activity poses to others' information. We introduce the concept "perceived shared risk," which includes OSN users' perceived severity and susceptibility of exposing others' information. Results indicate culture, concerns regarding one's own information, and Facebook information disclosure self-efficacy influence both risk components. We also identify a correlation between perceived shared risk and the use of OSN privacy controls.