Are households ready to engage with smart home technology?

Abstract

This paper contributes new knowledge regarding consumers’ preparedness for smart home technology adoption. This research bridges together three important frameworks–the technology readiness index (TRI) 2.0, consumer engagement, and perceived risk and trust–to understand consumers’ intentions to adopt smart home technology. We examine both direct and indirect effects, with results demonstrating the model explains 77% variance of consumers’ imagined engagement with smart home technology and 74% variance of intentions to adopt; hence, our model has greater predictive power than others proposed in the literature. Theoretically and managerially, we demonstrate a new pathway to consumers’ adoption of smart home technology in two ways. First, we depict the impact of consumers’ general perceptions of technology (TRI) on opinions and imagined engagement experiences with smart home technology. Second, we show how opinions and imagined experiences with smart home technology impact their intentions to adopt.