Abstract
BACKGROUND: China has the world’s largest elderly population, as well as the largest population of disabled elderly. Existing literature shows that there have been increased efforts to develop intelligent robots to address the shortage of caregivers for the elderly. However, there has been little research on elders’ acceptance of care from intelligent robots. AIMS: The purpose of this study was to examine the acceptance of intelligent robots among disabled elderly in need of long-term care. METHODS: We used structured questionnaires and interview methods during a social survey. In total, 3060 questionnaires and 50 interviews were collected. RESULTS: An overwhelming majority of the 3060 participants (79.39%) indicated that they would reject robot care. DISCUSSION: Future research should consider the background of the interviewees and the influence of the economy and social development across different regions, in order to distinguish the impact of each type of basic information on the acceptance of intelligent machines by the elderly. CONCLUSIONS: Most elderly adults were reluctant to allow robots to provide services that involved physical contact. Therefore, the development and design of robots should consider elderly individuals’ attitudes toward non-human services, in addition to broadening the scope of activities that intelligent robots could cover, and providing intelligent tools and products that the elderly would be more likely to gradually accept.
Highlights
China has the world's largest elderly population, as well as the largest population of disabled elderly
The purpose of this study was to examine the acceptance of intelligent robots among disabled elderly in need of long-term care
One important characteristic of the population in China is that the proportion of elderly residents over 80 and the disabled elderly presents a trend of synchronous rapid growth
Summary
The demographic data collected from the questionnaires included age, gender, marital status, level of education, health status and housing arrangements (Table 2). The survey helped to reveal that 79.39% of the 3,060 respondents (Fig. 2) would refuse and only 20.61% would be willing to be cared for by intelligent robots. We investigated the specific care services that the respondents would be willing to receive from intelligent robots. The vast majority of individuals (75.52%) stated that they would be willing to receive cleaning services from intelligent robots. There are only a dozen caregivers, who are only capable of taking care of our daily routines, meals, and sleep. Sometimes they can’t even respond timeously to our bed callers.
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