Strengthening the Trialability for the Intention to Use of mHealth Apps Amidst Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

Recent advancements in mHealth apps and services have played a vital role in strengthening healthcare services and enabling their accessibility to marginalized people. With the alarming rise in COVID-19 infection rates around the world, there appears to be an urgent call to modernize traditional medical practices to combat the pandemic. This study aims to investigate the key factors influencing the trialability of mHealth apps/services and behavioral intention to adopt mobile health applications. The study also examines the moderating effects of self-discipline motivation, knowledge, and attitude on the relationship between trialability and behavioral intention to use. The deductive reasoning approach was followed in a positivism paradigm. The study used convenience sampling and collected responses from 280 Generation Y participants in Bangladesh. Partial least square-based structural equation modeling was employed. The results revealed that relative advantage (beta = 0.229, p < 0.05), compatibility (beta = 0.232, p < 0.05), complexity (beta = -0.411, p < 0.05), and observability (beta = 0.235, p < 0.05) of mHealth apps influence the trialability of mHealth apps and services among users. Trialability compatibility (beta = 0.425, p < 0.05) of mHealth was positively related to the behavioral intention to use these mobile apps. The study found no moderating effects of attitude (beta = 0.043, p > 0.05) or self-discipline motivation (beta = -0.007, p > 0.05) on the hypothesized relationships. The empirical findings of this study may facilitate the development, design process, and implementation of mHealth applications with improved features that can lead to high user acceptance among Generation Y during future health crises.