The Impact of IT Identity on Users’ Emotions: A Conceptual Framework in Health-Care Setting

Stimulating positive emotions in patients and alleviating their negative emotions is valuable in health care IT contexts. One form of health IT are patient-centric tools which are used directly by patients to facilitate access to their medical history, and receive feedback about their health status. The goal of this study is to understand what factors influence the arousal of emotions in patients while using these tools. Past studies tend to emphasize on how IT shapes emotions, underplaying the role of the individual user and his/her shared identity with IT in the process. In this research, we argue that patients’ IT identity (i.e., the extent to which they consider IT as integral to their sense of self) and their core self-evaluation (i.e., their sense of how capable they are in managing their disease) can play important roles in shaping users’ evaluation of IT, and eventually their emotions about IT.