Adoption of telemedicine services during COVID-19: an application of extended protection motivation theory

The present study aims at exploring the factors influencing patients to adopt telemedicine services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The constructs of protection motivation theory (PMT) along with perceived patient empathy and perceived desirability (PD) have been used to investigate the telemedicine adoption behaviour. Data have been collected through a structured questionnaire survey from the people who used telemedicine services during the COVID-19 outbreak. Judgemental sampling is applied for selecting the respondents. Smart PLS software 2.0M3 has been used for analysing the data with partial least square structural equation modelling technique. The statistical findings reveal that perceived severity (PS) is the most important factor influencing the adoption of telemedicine services (ATS) during COVID-19 followed by perceived patient empathy (PPE), perceived vulnerability (PV) and self-efficacy (SE). The mediating effect test findings reveal that there exists partial mediation of PD in the relationship between PS and ATS; SE and ATS; and PPE and ATS. The implications of the findings are discussed in the last section of the paper.