Understanding Acceptance of Healthcare Technology Among Older Adults Through TAM and UTAUT: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (Preprint)

BACKGROUND To understand the acceptance of healthcare technology for older adults, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is commonly used. However, the divergence in the current literature makes it difficult to predict acceptance and understand how various factors affect older adults’ behavior. OBJECTIVE This study aims to 1) determine the influence of perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and social influence (SI) on the behavioral intention (BI) to use healthcare technology among older adults and 2) and assess the moderating effects of age, gender, geographic region, type of healthcare technology, and the presence of visual demonstrations on these three pairwise relationships. METHODS Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and ProQuest electronic databases were searched from inception to February 2024. Two independent reviewers screened the titles, abstracts, full texts, and performed data extraction and risk of bias assessments with the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale. The "meta" package in R was used for data synthesis, conducting random-effects meta-analyses, meta-regression and subgroup analysis. RESULTS 41 studies with a total of 11,574 participants were included. Random-effects meta-analyses showed significant positive correlations for PU-BI (r = 0.607, 95% CI 0.543 - 0.665, P CONCLUSIONS The findings indicate that PU, PEOU, SI significantly impact the acceptance of healthcare technology among older adults, with heterogeneity influenced by geographic region, type of technology, and presence of visual demonstrations. Researchers should account for these variables when interpreting previous research and embarking on new studies with the TAM or UTAUT model for older adults. CLINICALTRIAL Current paper is not RCT