Adoption of Smart Technology Among Older Adults: Challenges and Issues

Today's older adults pursue independent lifestyles. Accordingly, the concept of aging in place, living longer in one's own home without moving for support and assistance, is increasingly popular. To facilitate aging in place, the potential of smart technology has long been acknowledged. Yet the promise has not been realized; the market adoption rate for such smart technologies is very low. For example, personal emergency alarms are adopted by less than 5% of older Americans who could benefit from such systems (Lau, 2006). As the personal emergency alarm example shows, potential usefulness alone cannot guarantee market success. Rather, a range of technical, individual, and social characteristics can act to facilitate or hinder adoption. The existing literature has explored how some of the factors, such as perceived usefulness, usability, and cost, contribute to older adults’ decisions around adoption of smart technology. More recently, additional factors such as emotion, independence, compatibility, and trust have also been identified as important in determining older adults’ technology adoption. This paper describes the various factors and how they affect and determine adoption, as well as what they mean to practitioners and policymakers.