How Psychological Resistance and the Trust-building Factors Effect Elders’ Daily Care Technology Adoption Behavior?
The increasing elderly population with low birth
rates in western countries has created a shortage of
support workers to help them in their daily tasks, and
the current health care systems were struggling to keep
up with the rising demand for support/care workers. The
airborne COVID-19 virus outbreak worsened the situation.
The older adults were at the highest risk of death due
to the COVID-19 and degradation in their immune systems
with their age. The technological advancement in current
years (such as Care robots, emotional companion robots,
smart home products, and wearable devices) looks like a
promising solution to these problems. Question is--
would they be adopted by elderly?
In our previous efforts (2020) we studied to understand
the level of trust elderly people must have to accept
such technological autonomous systems instead of human
support, and how trust and personal characteristics can
improve the intent to adopt autonomous systems. This
work has been published on-line in “The Journal of
Technological Forecasting & Social Change”. In 2021 we
continue our research efforts on this theme. Here we
study how the psychological resistance factors and trust
generating factors affect the technology adoption
decisions of elders. The effects of age, gender, income,
past employment, and lifestyle on the relationship
between the independent variables (the psychological
resistance factors and trust generating factors) with
the dependent variable (technology adoption decision)
are also being studied in this research. The initial
results derived from the first set of data obtained so
far are presented while the data collection continues.