An empirical investigation of patients' acceptance and resistance toward the health cloud: The dual factor perspective

Recent technological trends such as the health cloud provide a strong infrastructure and offer a true enabler for healthcare services on the Internet. Despite its great potential, gaps exist in our understanding of how users evaluate change related to the health cloud and how they decide to resist it. According to dual factor perspectives, this study develops an integrated model to explain patients' intention to use health cloud services and their intention to resist it. A field survey was conducted in Taiwan to collect data from patients and a structural equation model was used to examine the data. The results show that patient resistance to use the health cloud is caused by suck costs, inertia, perceived value, transition costs, and uncertainty. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions are shown to have positive and direct effects on patients' intention to use the health cloud. The results also indicate that the relationship between the patients' intention to use the health cloud and their resistance to using it had a significant negative effect. Our study illustrates the importance of incorporating user resistance in technology acceptance studies in general and health technology usage studies in particular. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.