Consumers' Preferences for Purchasing mHealth Apps: Discrete Choice Experiment

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Consumer Behavior
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Mobile health (mHealth) apps face challenges with user adoption and retention due to design-preference mismatches.
• Understanding consumer preferences is essential for improving the design and success of mHealth applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate consumer preferences for mHealth app attributes.
• To analyze how preferences vary based on sociodemographic factors and user experience with health apps.

Main Methods:

• A discrete choice experiment survey was administered to 593 adults in Hong Kong.
• Seven key attributes were evaluated: usefulness, ease of use, security/privacy, healthcare professional endorsement, mobile data usage, storage consumption, and cost.
• Mixed-effect logit regression models analyzed attribute importance and subgroup differences.

Main Results:

• Cost was the most influential attribute, followed by security/privacy, usefulness, mobile data consumption, storage, and professional endorsement.
• Moderate ease of use was preferred over very easy or not easy options.
• Significant variations in preferences were observed across different demographic groups and user experience levels.

Conclusions:

• Future mHealth apps should prioritize low data/storage use, robust security, valuable content, user-friendly interfaces, and professional involvement.
• Developers must tailor app design to the specific preferences of their target user base for optimal engagement.