Examining the Effect of Overload on the MHealth Application Resistance Behavior of Elderly Users: An SOR Perspective

Aging has increased the burden of social medical care. Mobile health (mHealth) services provide an effective way to alleviate this pressure. However, the actual usage of mHealth services for elderly users is still very low. The extant studies mainly focused on elderly users’ mHealth adoption behavior, but resistance behavior has not been sufficiently explored by previous research. A present study tried to remedy this research gap by examining the effect of overload factors on the mHealth application resistance behavior based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework. The results indicated that information overload and system feature overload of an mHealth application increased the fatigue and technostress of the elderly user, which further increased their resistance behavior. Meanwhile, we integrated the intergeneration support with the SOR model to identify the buffer factor of the elderly user’s resistance behavior. The results showed that intergenerational support not only directly decrease the elderly user’s mHealth application resistance behavior, but also moderates (weaken) the effects of fatigue and technostress on resistance behavior. The present study also provided several valuable theoretical and practical implications.