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In the prior literature, the motivation to adopt wearable fitness technology (WFT) has been linked with either intrinsic or extrinsic. However, how the subcategories of extrinsic motivations (identified, introjected and external) affect the consumers’ WFT adoption decision remains sparse. Furthermore, do regulatory focus (prevention vs promotion) and gender differences the effects of different motivations on WFT adoption is almost unknown in the health-care marketing literature. This study aims to fill the above-mentioned gap and to unfold the WFT adoption beyond the traditional motivation by incorporating the organismic integration theory (part of self-determined theory) and regulatory focus theory.

This study used a questionnaire-based survey. Using the “AMOS” survey, questionnaire responses of 641 respondents were analyzed and validated by using structural equation modeling. All the variables were adopted from the literature.

The results show that intrinsic, identified and external motivations have the greatest impact on consumers’ decisions, while introjected motivation was not significant directly. The moderation effects of regulatory focus are significant in such a way that prevention focus influences the introjected motivation and promotion focus affects the external motivation and WFT adoption decision. Furthermore, the findings on gender moderation suggest that women are more intrinsically motivated, and men are more externally motivated for WFT adoption.

The new insights and contributions of this study provide a better understanding of WFT adoption and help sellers develop more effective marketing strategies.

This study incorporates subcategories of extrinsic motivations to provide a deeper understanding of consumers’ behavior. Furthermore, this study applies a unique framework of organismic integration theory to consumers’ WFT adoption. It is also among very few research that investigate regulatory focus and gender impact on consumers’ WFT adoption.