by Niehaves, Björn and Plattfaut, Ralf
Abstract:
Modern societies share two common trends: First, elderly people form a strongly growing group in the population (societal aging) and, second, the importance of information and communication technology is growing rapidly. However, the elderly are often excluded from benefiting from IT-enabled service delivery: An age-related digital divide exists. Current research lacks understanding what reasons prevent elderly to use the internet. Therefore, this paper examines the intention to use the internet in a private manner among the elderly. For higher explanatory power we also included two other age-groups (G1: 59). Here, we build a survey instrument based on the Model of Acceptance of Technology in Households (MATH) and test the model against comprehensive survey data (n=501). We find out that MATH is able to explain between 42% and 81% of the variance in private internet usage intention. Moreover, several differences in driver for usage intention exist, e.g. was the importance of applications for fun much higher in the first age group than among the other. Potentially fruitful avenues for future research are discussed.
Reference:
The MATH of Internet Adoption: Comparing Different Age-Groups (Niehaves, Björn and Plattfaut, Ralf), In 10. Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2011), 2011.
Bibtex Entry:
@InProceedings{Niehaves2011d, author = {Niehaves, Bj"orn and Plattfaut, Ralf}, title = {The MATH of Internet Adoption: Comparing Different Age-Groups}, booktitle = {10. Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2011)}, year = {2011}, note = {Z"urich, CH}, abstract = {Modern societies share two common trends: First, elderly people form a strongly growing group in the population (societal aging) and, second, the importance of information and communication technology is growing rapidly. However, the elderly are often excluded from benefiting from IT-enabled service delivery: An age-related digital divide exists. Current research lacks understanding what reasons prevent elderly to use the internet. Therefore, this paper examines the intention to use the internet in a private manner among the elderly. For higher explanatory power we also included two other age-groups (G1: <40; G2: 40-59; G3: >59). Here, we build a survey instrument based on the Model of Acceptance of Technology in Households (MATH) and test the model against comprehensive survey data (n=501). We find out that MATH is able to explain between 42% and 81% of the variance in private internet usage intention. Moreover, several differences in driver for usage intention exist, e.g. was the importance of applications for fun much higher in the first age group than among the other. Potentially fruitful avenues for future research are discussed.}, url = {http://aisel.aisnet.org/wi2011/23/}, }