ABSTRACT

Smart Home Technology presents an exciting opportunity to support seniors living independently in their homes. Despite widespread interest in Smart Homes, seniors’ readiness to adopt Smart Home Technology is low. To determine the factors underpinning Australian seniors’ acceptance and adoption of Smart Home Technology using an extended UTAUT model that includes Trust, Resistance to Change and Technology Anxiety. A longitudinal study was conducted to validate the proposed model prior to and after the implementation of a pilot Smart Home Modification program for seniors. Structural Equation Modeling has been applied to test the proposed hypotheses using a sample of 60 seniors in regional Australia. Perceived Usefulness is an important predictor of Smart Home Technology adoption by seniors. Trust was found to indirectly predict adoption of Smart Home Technology via Perceived Usefulness. This study showed that Perceived Usefulness and Trust are critical factors for the acceptance and use of SHT by seniors, validating the extension of UTAUT with a Trust factor. This makes a unique theoretical contribution to the literature with implications for aged care providers and policymakers to consider seniors’ perceived usefulness and trust in the design, development, and implementation of Smart Home solutions.

摘要

智能家居技术为支持在家中独立生活的老年人提供了一个令人兴奋的机会。尽管人们普遍对智能家居感兴趣，但老年人采用智能家居技术的意愿很低。使用包含信任、变革阻力和技术焦虑的扩展 UTAUT 模型，确定支持澳大利亚老年人接受和采用智能家居技术的因素。在为老年人实施智能家居改造试点项目之前和之后，我们进行了一项纵向研究来验证所提出的模型。结构方程模型已被用于使用澳大利亚地区 60 名老年人的样本来检验提出的假设。感知有用性是老年人采用智能家居技术的重要预测指标。发现信任可以通过感知有用性间接预测智能家居技术的采用。这项研究表明，感知有用性和信任是老年人接受和使用 SHT 的关键因素，验证了具有信任因素的 UTAUT 的扩展。这对文献做出了独特的理论贡献，对老年护理提供者和政策制定者有影响，可以考虑老年人对智能家居解决方案的设计、开发和实施的有用性和信任感。