Technology-Specific Factors and Online Healthcare Usage Intention Among Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study in the Urban Areas of Chongqing, China

Background: As online healthcare technology aims to support aging, reduce healthcare costs, and offer sustainable solutions, it is important to develop fundamental knowledge on what factors are associated with the intention to use online healthcare services among older persons. Therefore, this study aims to determine how technology-specific factors are associated with older adults’ willingness to use online healthcare services—an aspect that remains underexplored in the available literature. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey in 2023 in Chongqing city, Western China, for which 403 urban older adults aged 60 or older were enrolled. Results: We found that technology-specific factors—namely, perceived risk (B = −0.100, p < 0.001), perceived benefit (B = 0.209, p < 0.001), relative advantage (B = 0.261, p < 0.001), and compatibility (B = 0.274, p < 0.001)—were significantly linked to the intention to use online healthcare services. In contrast, a reported financial strain status of ‘difficult’ (B = −1.024, p = 0.019) was negatively related to the intention to use online healthcare services. Conclusions: The results of this study identify four technology-specific factors—perceived risk, perceived benefit, relative advantage, and compatibility—which show strong associations with online healthcare usage intention. These results suggest that technology-specific factors may be relevant to older individuals’ perceptions, values, needs, preferences, experiences, and lifestyles, and may be linked to their perceptions of digital health technology. In addition, the results of this study suggest that relative advantage, compatibility, and perceived benefit are positively correlated with online healthcare usage intention, whereas perceived risk is negatively correlated. The findings also demonstrate the applicability of the diffusion of innovations theory and benefit–risk analysis in understanding online healthcare usage intention in older adults. Moreover, these findings and their implications provide specific evidence that the reinforcement of online healthcare usage intention in everyday life depends on technology-related factors, at least in the Chinese context. Better understanding of the theoretical mechanisms underlying the relationships between usage intention and technology-specific factors can aid in the development and implementation of sustainable technology-based solutions for promoting the use of online healthcare services among older adults in Chongqing, China.