This study explores how fitness technologies support users in achieving their fitness goals. As performing fitness activities is an intermediate process related to the realization of fitness goals, it is essential to understand how fitness technologies facilitate users’ exercise experience. To that end, this study draws on affordance actualization theory and the concept of exercise engagement to develop and empirically test a model measuring the impact of four actualized affordances on users’ cognitive and emotional engagement in fitness activities, and subsequently on their fitness goal attainment. Data from two survey waves involving 221 matched responses were analyzed using CB-SEM. The results indicate that while fitness technologies embed multiple features, users predominantly actualized four key affordances—self-appraisal, social appraisal, rewarding, and reminding. Among these, self-appraisal and social appraisal affordances significantly enhance emotional exercise engagement, which in turn has a positive effect on fitness goal achievement. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of actualized affordances in fitness technology use context, focusing on how specific actualized affordances foster emotional exercise engagement, a critical driver of goal attainment. By integrating the affordance actualization theory with exercise engagement, this research provides new insights into how fitness technologies can effectively support users’ fitness journeys.

Data breaches and cyber incidents are on the rise, and companies continually research new technologies to defend against attacks and protect customer data. The blockchain is a data store designed to promote data privacy, as well as transaction integrity. Enterprises in several industries, especially banking, have investigated the implementation of blockchain-based databases to replace centralised databases as one mechanism for protecting customers’ data by separating transactional data from personally identifiable information. Despite the blockchain’s privacy protections, consumers remain largely unaware of these benefits. Building on the Health Belief Model (HBM), we include privacy concerns and inertia as critical factors that influence consumers’ perceptions of blockchain-based databases’ benefits. Using a sample of 304 respondents, we test a theoretical model incorporating these factors. Our study results indicate threat severity, threat susceptibility, awareness, and inertia significantly influence the perceived benefits of blockchain, which has a significant positive influence on consumers’ intention to switch to blockchain-based applications. Although consumers’ comfort with the status quo of traditional banking mechanisms is a significant barrier to the realisation of blockchain banking applications benefits, additional awareness of consumer privacy protections can persuade customers to use the blockchain-based applications, especially if they exhibit heightened privacy concerns.

Many organisations create, store, or purchase information that links individuals’ identities to other data. Termed personally identifiable information (PII), this information has become the lifeblood of many firms across the globe. As organisations accumulate their constituencies’ PII (e.g. customers’, students’, patients’, and employees’ data), individuals’ privacy will depend on the adequacy of organisations’ information privacy safeguards. Despite existing protections, many breaches still occur. For example, US organisations reported around 4,500 PII-breach events between 2005 and 2015. With such a high number of breaches, determining all threats to PII within organisations proves a burdensome task. In light of this difficulty, we utilise text-mining and cluster analysis techniques to create a taxonomy of various organisational PII breaches, which will help drive targeted research towards organisational PII protection. From an organisational systematics perspective, our classification system provides a foundation to explain the diversity among the myriad of threats. We identify eight major PII-breach types and provide initial literature reviews for each type of breach. We detail how US organisations differ regarding their exposure to these breaches, as well as how the level of severity (i.e. number of records affected) differs among these PII breaches. Finally, we offer several paths for future research.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs permit employees to use personal devices to access organizational information. Users gain convenience, while employers benefit from increased productivity and reduced IT expense. Security boundaries must extend to personal devices to mitigate data exfiltration, thereby infringing on employees’ privacy by monitoring their personal devices. These monitoring mechanisms play a critical role in employee participation in a BYOD program. Our results demonstrate that the BYOD monitoring mechanisms and privacy concerns suppress the benefits of increased job performance expectancy when evaluating whether to participate in a BYOD program. This research identifies that tasks measured, frequency of monitoring, and organizational control are significant impediments to behavioral intention for BYOD participation.