Investigating The Relationship Between Human And Their Personal Technical Products

Intelligent technical products have penetrated into people’s daily lives. With the popularity and continuous development of smart devices, people today seem more dependent on these technical products. Instead of interpersonal intimacy, and the relationships between human and brand or a type of certain products, we focus on each individual’s personal smart devices. This paper firstly reviews the former researches on interpersonal intimacy, and then narrows the scope to the feelings of people to their personal technical products which have been kept for a relatively long time. We adapt and apply the theoretical achievements of previous studies to conceptualize the human-product intimacy. And then based on the modes of intimacy building, we propose our research model and test the hypotheses with total 325 samples. During the research, we divide the questionnaire respondents into two groups, one for mobile phone version, and one for laptop version, trying to find some differences between these two groups. Through reliability and validity examination of research instruments, and structural model testing, we find mental-related variables- delegation, disclosure, and life experience are significant to establish human-product intimacy, while intimacy will lead to user addiction, traumatic behaviors, and high valuation. This study offers theoretical contributions towards the research on interactions and relationship between human and smart technologies. Also, it provides IT companies and relevant industry practical inspirations and guidance to improve benefits.