Internet-of-Things and Smart Homes for Elderly Healthcare: An End User Perspective

Although an Internet-of-Things-based smart home solution can provide an improved and better approach to healthcare management, yet its end user adoption is very low. With elderly people as the main target, these conservative users pose a serious challenge to the successful implementation of smart home healthcare services. The objective of this research was to develop and test a theoretical framework empirically for determining the core factors that can affect the elderly users’ acceptance of smart home services for healthcare. Accordingly, an online survey was conducted with 254 elderly people aged 55 years and above across four Asian countries. Partial least square structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the effect of eight hypothesized predicting constructs. The user perceptions were measured on a conceptual level rather than the actual usage intention toward a specific service. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, expert advice, and perceived trust have a positive impact on the behavioral intention. The same association is negative for technology anxiety and perceived cost. Facilitating conditions and social influence do not have any effect on the behavioral intention. The model could explain 81.4% of the total variance in the dependent variable i.e., behavioral intention. Effort expectancy is the leading predictor of smart homes for healthcare acceptance among the elderly. Together with expert advice, perceived trust, and perceived cost, these four factors represent the key influence of the elderly peoples’ acceptance behavior. This paper provides the groundwork to explore the process of the actual adoption of smart home services for healthcare by the elderly people with potential future research areas.