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Technological developments have brought about a radical change in the attitudes of human beings about life and lifestyle, making specific dreams of the earlier few decades become authentic experiences. One such technological development is wearable technology, which has proliferated into many devices with magical powers that people only imagined in the past (Chang et al., 2016). The last two decades have been a tremendous acceleration in exploring and applying wearable technologies from several domains like industry, academia, research institutions, business, technology, and society (Lee et al., 2016). Gartner’s prediction for the sale of smart wearable devices in 2020 stood at 52 billion and is expected to reach 63 billion in 2021, increasing 22% (Brown, 2019). The wearable devices market is growing rapidly, with the global smart-watch shipments alone growing by 42% at the end of the third quarter of 2019 (Strategy Analytics, 2019).
Research Motivation and Objectives
There is a perennial interest from the industry and academia to conduct research studies on youth about the need to harness the potential of wearables. The term youth is a period that ranges from adolescence to middle age in a human life cycle. Various agencies have quantified this period; 15-24 years (United Nations, 2020), 15-29 years (National Youth Policy, 2014 India). This research study's motivation is multi-fold. The primary reason is that today’s youth have better exposure and access to technology, and they are smart enough to exploit new technologies to their advantage. The changing lifestyles of the millennials, the knowledge industry, and service beyond boundaries led to the increased risk of unprecedented ailments at a much earlier age in their lives.
The objective of this research paper is two-fold.
First, to study the factors that significantly influence the acceptance of intelligent wearable devices among youth.
The second is to examine the moderating factors that affect youth's willingness and behavioral intention towards using smart wearable devices.
The research will seek answers to 'Why wearable devices are so much popular among youth, and what is their perception of the acceptance of wearables?' 'What are the critical moderators that affect their behavioral intentions and willingness to use?'
This section converses the current literature from two significant perspectives. The first section deliberates the research on the application of smart wearable devices (SWD) to comprehend the authors' efforts in wearables technology research. The second section discusses the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model's relevance to ensure suitability, validity, and reliability while explaining technology adoption research in many scenarios. Finally, the section states the research gaps to reinforce the authors' attempt to extend the model's application to investigate the adoption of SWDs among youth.
Applications of Smart Wearable Devices (SWD)
That smart wearable devices will be the next generation of core information technology (IT) products (Chang et al., 2016) sprouts out of its advantages over other IT products. Designers and manufacturers require first-hand information about what (type of wearable), who (users), when (time, duration, frequency), why (purpose of use), and how (functionality and process) and to improve the features and capabilities so they can capture the market (Porter and Heppelmann, 2014; Lin et al., 2016).
Wearable devices might surpass or replace smartphones and laptops in performance (Kim and Park, 2019). Wen et al. (2017) argued that a significant gap existed between consumer expectations and the reliability of wearables data management. The market will complement the healthcare industry, given the interest among young people who aspire for a fit and healthy lifestyle (Ridgers et al., 2018; Goodyear et al., 2019).