Influence of User Factors on the Acceptance of Ambient Assisted Living Technologies in Professional Care Contexts

Abstract

Demographic change in conjunction with increasing amounts of older people and people in need of care pose high burdens and challenges for the care sectors of today’s society. In the last decades, it is tried to face these challenges by developing technical solutions in the area of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). Besides technical functions and opportunities, the acceptance of future users is decisive for a successful implementation of those technologies in everyday life situations. As AAL technologies have an enormous potential to support care staff as well as caretakers in professional care situations, it is questionable to what extent professional care staff accepts and adopts to use assisting technologies in their professional everyday life. In more detail, it is of major interest to analyze how care professionals perceive potential benefits and barriers of AAL technology usage, specific characteristics of data gathering and storage as well as if individual user factors of care professionals influence the perception and acceptance of AAL technologies.