Predictors of Seniors’ Interest in Assistive Applications on Smartphones: Evidence from a Population-Based Survey in Slovenia

Andraž Petrovčič, Sebastiaan Peek and Vesna Dolničar
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Andraž Petrovčič: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Sebastiaan Peek: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Department of Tranzo, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Vesna Dolničar: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: Assistive applications (apps) on smartphones could contribute to a better quality of life for seniors living independently at home. At present, there is a lack of empirical evidence of seniors’ acceptance of such apps. The Cycle of Technology Acquirement by Independent-Living Seniors (C-TAILS) model was recently proposed for studying the interplay between acceptance factors by integrating the personal, social and technological domains of seniors’ daily lives. This study aimed to explore how four groups of factors, clustered in accordance with the C-TAILS model, predict seniors’ interest in assistive apps, on a representative sample of the Slovenian population aged 55 years or older. The 617 respondents, who were contacted though a telephone survey, answered a questionnaire about their interest in three groups of assistive apps and four groups of potentially associated acceptance factors. Three linear regression models were used to analyse the association between the factors and the seniors’ interest in the three types of assistive apps. Smartphone-related dispositional traits were the strongest predictors across all three models. Among mobile phone usage patterns, smartphone use and the breadth of mobile phone features used were significant factors, while the significance of seniors’ personal characteristics and socio-economic conditions varied across the models. Hence, awareness that these factors play different roles in the acceptance of different assistive apps is needed in order to design viable interventions for their acceptance among seniors.

Keywords: acceptance factors; assistive applications; C-TAILS model; population-based survey; seniors; smartphones (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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