Healthcare Self-Management Tools: Promotion or Prevention Regulatory Focus? A Scale (PR-PV) Development and Validation

Health self-management tools, believed to provide effective and cost-efficient healthcare, are often rejected by consumers. Regulatory focus theory (Higgins 2014) could facilitate adoption patterns of such tools by positioning adoption as matching/mismatching individual motivational concern: promotion/prevention focus. This research proposes that people perceive products as inherently promotion or prevention oriented, and matching person orientation to product orientation enhances tool uptake. The paper outlines the development of a scale measuring promotion/prevention characteristics of objects, providing evidence for dimensionality, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. The resulting PM-PV scale allows promotion/prevention categorization for personal healthcare tools with potential for wider generalization.