Between intimacy and surveillance: elderly users’ adaptation and privacy negotiation in human-robot interaction

Elderly users adapt through compromise and negotiation on how to assert control over the interaction with social robots. Privacy negotiation involves preserving dignity by installing clear consents on what are the boundaries of data access. This paper aims to understand how elderly individuals, informal caregivers, and formal caregivers in Chengdu, China, adapt to and interact with social care robots in the context of home-based aging. With 498 participants, this qualitative investigation looks at the subtle ethical, emotional, and practical nuances in human-robot interaction, focusing on values such as devolution, safety, privacy, enablement, independence, and social connectedness. It studies how compromise, persuasion, and negotiation come to form the main avenues through which old people keep a sense of empowerment while integrating robotic assistance into their daily lives. It further explores how participants assign variable social roles to the robots from obedient servants to healthcare aides and how prior agreements and user control can influence acceptance and reduce resistance. The focus goes on how the balance between technological assistance and personal liberty is negotiated, and also on how emotional reassurance and trust tie into long-term adaptation. The study thereby contributes to the worldwide conversation about ethical eldercare technology by situating findings within a non-Western, community-based setting. Gains from this research should feed back into the design, policy, and implementation of social robots in aging societies and make sure that they abide by human dignity, cultural expectations, and lived realities.