USING TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL, ANALYZING THE ROLE OF TELEHEALTH SERVICES IN THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY DURING COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The emergence of COVID-19 has brought a demographic shift in the usage of health services. Patients used to physically visit healthcare facilities but today many of them utilize technology to get advice from doctors. As a result, technology is becoming more widely used and accepted in the healthcare industry. Using the technological acceptance model as a base, this study aims to identify the critical factors that impact patients' adoption of telehealth services. This study found that the intention to adopt technology is dependent on reliability, social norms, schemes, offers, hedonic motivation, convenience, and affordability. These factors comprise 67% of the total variance. Analysis using structural equation modelling revealed that reliability, convenience, and affordability at (beta =0.22, p=***), (beta = 0.31, p=***), (beta =0.33, p=***) shows positive intention by consumers to adopt telehealth services. As a result, the hypotheses H1 (Reliability has a positive influence on the adoption intention of telehealth services), H5 (Convenience has a positive influence on the adoption intention of telehealth services), and H6 ( Affordability has a positive influence on the adoption intention of telehealth services) are accepted. The path coefficient for social norms, hedonic motivation, schemes, and offers was negative and non-significant. Therefore, hypotheses H2 (Social Norms have a positive influence on the adoption intention of telehealth services), H3 (Social Norms have a positive influence on the adoption intention of telehealth services), and H4 (Hedonic Motivation has a positive influence on the adoption intention of telehealth services) were rejected. The findings also demonstrated that telehealth service adoption intentions positively impacted usage behavior.