From wearable to insideable: Is ethical judgment key to the acceptance of human capacity-enhancing intelligent technologies?

The advent of intelligent wearable (external devices, such as watches and clothing) and insideable (implanted devices, such as identification chips or chips that control technological devices) human-capacity enhancing technologies has opened an ethical debate about their development and use in society. Based on data from an international sample of 1563 digital natives, a model is proposed and tested (1) that introduces ethical judgment and its five dimensions ("moral equity", "relativism", "utilitarianism", "egoism" and "contractualism") to explain intention to use intelligent capacity-enhancing technological devices; (2) that helps to explain the technological leap involved in moving from wearing technologies to incorporating them into the human body, through the moderating role that technology type has in the relationship between ethical judgment and intention to use. The results showed that: (1) Ethical judgment is key for the acceptance of wearables and insideables, and has greater explanatory capacity for insideables than for wearables; (2) "Egoism" has the highest explanatory power for intention to use insideables and "utilitarianism" is the most important dimension for intention to use wearables. Finally, a series of operational implications are proposed to guide the development and commercialisation of devices, while taking into account the ethical judgment of the users.