The Wearer, the Device, and Its Use: Advances in Understanding the Social Acceptability of Wearables

Abstract

The WEAR Scale was used to collect data on the social acceptability of three wearable devices from 1,387 participants from the US Midwest and Silicon Valley. The most notable result was that a head-worn “medical device” was rated as more socially acceptable ( d=0.78) than the same device described as a “brain fitness tool,” which was the opposite of what was hypothesized. Also, as hypothesized, Silicon Valley participants found the wearables more socially acceptable than Midwestern U.S. participants. The Scale and these results enable industry to better predict the human factors affecting social acceptability of wearables throughout development and before market release.