A change is gonna come: The effect of user factors on the acceptance of ambient assisted living

Abstract

In the course of demographic change, an increasing proportion of older people in need of care pose enormous burdens for the care sectors of today’s society, which could dramatically aggravate in the next decades. Developing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies is one approach to support older people and people in need of care to live as long as possible independently at their own home. Besides technical opportunities and functions, future users’ acceptance is decisive for the success and long-term usage of innovative technologies. Thus, for AAL technologies it has to be explored which factors are crucial for acceptance and to what extent those factors differ with regard to diverse user groups. Referring to existing technology acceptance models (in particular the UTAUT2-model), it is questionable whether such models can be adapted and are appropriately usable for the context of AAL technologies. In this paper, we therefore investigate potential users’ attitudes towards AAL systems as well as the importance and relationships of technology-related and user-specific characteristics in a scenario-based online questionnaire study using an adapted and extended version of the UTAUT2-model. The undertaken adaption led to a better understanding of influencing factors for AAL acceptance: privacy concerns need to be addressed as an additional predictor. Regarding user factors, age, Attitude Towards Technology (ATT), and caregiving experience were revealed as influencing factors, whereas gender and health status did not show any effects on AAL acceptance.