Personalization-Privacy Paradox in Using Mobile Health Services

Abstract

The rapid growth of the population and the increase in life expectancy put intense pressure on the healthcare systems worldwide. Mobile health applications (m-health apps) have the potential to help ease the situation by offering highly personalized services that empower individuals to take better care of their health. To reach their full potential, m-health apps must continuously gather personal health data from users, which leads to privacy concerns. We study the influence of users’ privacy concerns on their intention to disclose personal health data to m-health apps. Using an online survey and conducting SEM-PLS, we show that a personalization-privacy paradox is present in the context of m-health apps. While respondents claim to have privacy concerns about using m-health apps, their concerns did not negatively affect their self-disclosure intentions nor their behavioral intention. Our results show that the magnitude of personalization-privacy paradox is influenced by demographic factors especially gender and age.