Mobile Stress Management Applications: An Affordance-Theoretic Perspective on the Adoption and Use

Chronic stress is a burden on mental and physical health. Despite the development and effectiveness of mobile stress management applications, their adoption and continued use remain low. Given that research revealed systematic differences in usage behavior among user types, we aim to investigate what drives these differences. We extend the affordance perspective and argue that accounting for psychological needs, actualized affordances, and actualization costs across different user types provides a deeper understanding of the factors driving the adoption and use of mobile stress management applications. The qualitative interview study of our mixed-methods study reveals eight affordances, eight actualization costs, and initial evidence for systematic differences among the user types. The quantitative questionnaire study will uncover the psychological needs, actualized affordances, and perceived actualization costs of the six user types. This work contributes a new theoretical perspective to overcome the gap in the adoption and usage of mobile stress management applications.