Impact of the Psychological Resistance and the Trust-Building Factors on Elders’ Technology Adoption Decisions

The increasing elderly population in western countries has created a shortage of personal support workers (PSW), and the current healthcare systems are struggling to keep up with the rising demand for PSWs. The coronavirus outbreak worsened the situation because PSWs were becoming a medium for the coronavirus to spread. However, the recent technological advancement in elderly personal care (e.g., Care robots, Ambient intelligence devices/sensors) provides a promising solution to these problems. This research studies how the psychological resistance and trust generating factors affect the technology adoption decisions of elderly personal care devices. The moderating effects of age, gender, income, past profession, and lifestyle on the relationship between the independent variables (the psychological resistance and trust generating factors) with the dependent variable (technology adoption decision) were studied in this research. The study provides interesting results and proposes a new framework to understand the technology adoption of elders.