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Fitness Tracker Identity and Exercise Identity: How to Prevent Discontinuance and Promote Habitual Use

Since 2015, many organizations have invested heavily in fitness trackers as part of corporate wellness programs, aiming to improve employees’ health while reduce health insurance costs. However, for organizations to realize the anticipated value from their investment in fitness trackers in their corporate wellness programs, they should know how to prevent employees from discontinuing fitness trackers but promoting habitual use. To that end, this study looks at individuals’ discontinuance intention and habitual use of fitness trackers from the perspectives of fitness tracker identity and exercise identity, by asking people questions about how they view themselves in relation to a fitness tracker and in relation to exercise. Our results show that individuals who positively identify with a fitness tracker are less likely to discontinue and more likely to develop habitual use. Further, for the same fitness tracker identity, employees with stronger exercise identity have lower discontinuance intention. Also, for the same fitness tracker identity, employees with more monetary rewards from their organizations have lower discontinuance intention. Moreover, we found various significant antecedents of fitness tracker identity and suggest organizations develop corresponding mechanisms boosting employees’ fitness tracker identity.