Smart Homes and Quality of Life for the Elderly: Perspective of Competing Models

The percentage of the elderly population has been on rise steadily over the past few years across the globe, which is a cause of serious concern among the research fraternity. A lot of research is going on that tries to harness the benefits of the various information and communication technologies to enable these elderly people to live independently and promote a sense of overall well-being. Although in the evolutionary phase, yet smart homes can help these elderly people in their daily life. However, for the success of such smart systems, the intention of the users towards using those systems must be understood. But, there is a serious lack of relevant exploratory research that tries to measure and explain the adoption of such smart homes by the elderly population from a multiple theory perspective: namely, the technology acceptance model, the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior. The main aim of this paper is to fill up this void of a lack of theoretical approach by testing the three models in the context of the adoption of smart homes by the elderly population. In order to do so, we conducted a survey with N = 239 (after screening) and analyzed the results using the structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis techniques. Results suggest that all the three models are valid although they do not take into account certain factors that are unique to this context. This paper paper provides the initial groundwork to explore the process of adopting smart home services by the elderly with potential future research areas.