You inspire me and make my life better: Investigating a multiple sequential mediation model of smartwatch continuance intention

Abstract The increasing popularity of smartwatches is largely attributed to their self-tracking ability that will inspire goal-setting, leading to behavior changes and potentially improving people’s quality of life. While inspiration and well-being are emerging trends, surprisingly little empirical work has explored their potential in sustaining the use of smartwatches. Moreover, research knows very little about whether and how previous lifestyle incongruence (e.g., sedentary lifestyle) can affect consumers’ intention to continue using smartwatches. Against this background, this study provides a comprehensive framework based on the net valence framework, and supplemented by technology acceptance, medical, social psychology literatures. This research uniquely incorporates the psychological state of inspiration and well-being as serial mediators and previous lifestyle incongruence as an antecedent in the model. A survey among 324 actual smartwatch users provides insights into the lifestyle factor and the psychological mechanisms that lead to smartwatch continuance usage. The results reveal that the effects of perceived benefits and previous lifestyle incongruence on continuance intention are mediated by inspiration and well-being in serial. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.