With the acceleration of urbanization, effective smart city programs need to consider both daily management and crisis management. In this process, to enable health information technology to better contribute to the construction of smart cities, the government and firms need to pay attention to the public's intention to adopt technology. Based on the context of China's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in smart cities, we analyze the influencing factors of the behavioral intention to use health information technology using an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model. Data for this study were collected from 721 inhabitants of 290 smart cities in China. The empirical results showed that performance expectations, effort expectations, social influence, and facilitating conditions positively affected their behavioral intention to use health information technology, whereas perceived risk had the opposite effect. This study found that the positive effects of social influence and effort expectations on the behavioral intention to use health information technology increased with improvement in the perceived level of city smartness and technical information transparency. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications.