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Incentivizing the Use of Quantified Self Devices: The Cases of Digital Occupational Health Programs and Data-Driven Health Insurance Plans

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Well-Being in the Information Society. Fruits of Respect (WIS 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1270))

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Abstract

Initially designed for a use in private settings, smartwatches, activity trackers and other quantified self devices are receiving a growing attention from the organizational environment. Firms and health insurance companies, in particular, are developing digital occupational health programs and data-driven health insurance plans centered around these systems, in the hope of exploiting their potential to improve individual health management, but also to gather large quantities of data. As individual participation in such organizational programs is voluntary, organizations often rely on motivational incentives to prompt engagement. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms employed in organizational settings to incentivize the use of quantified self devices. We therefore seek, in this exploratory paper, to offer a first structured overview of this topic and identify the main motivational incentives in two emblematical cases: digital occupational health programs and data-driven health insurance plans. By doing so, we aim to specify the nature of this new dynamic around the use of quantified self devices and define some of the key lines for further investigation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Statistique de l’assurance maladie 2019, URL: https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/fr/home/zahlen-und-statistiken/statistiken-zur-krankenversicherung.html.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) grant no. 172740.

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  1. Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Stefan Stepanovic

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  1. Stefan Stepanovic
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Correspondence to Stefan Stepanovic .

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  1. Catholic University of Applied Sciences, Freiburg, Germany

    Mirella Cacace

  2. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Raija Halonen

  3. Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

    Hongxiu Li

  4. Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Thao Phuong Orrensalo

  5. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Chenglong Li

  6. Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Gunilla Widén

  7. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Reima Suomi

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Stepanovic, S. (2020). Incentivizing the Use of Quantified Self Devices: The Cases of Digital Occupational Health Programs and Data-Driven Health Insurance Plans. In: Cacace, M., et al. Well-Being in the Information Society. Fruits of Respect. WIS 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1270. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57847-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57847-3_5

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