Abstract
The elderly are the most predicted users for smart home technology in the United Arab Emirates and the population over 65 is expected to increase to 24.3% by 2030. Despite the rapid development of smart home technology, research has been mainly focused on technology development. To encourage conservative elderly users, however, smart home technology should be implemented for UAE elderly users to accept and integrate it into their daily lives. The objective of this paper is to analyze the preferences and needs of smart home technologies to understand the behaviors of UAE elderly users, and the factors affecting the acceptance of technology. As a methodology, a survey and interview were conducted for 110 people in their 40s and 60s and a total of 105 valid survey responses were collected and used as data for frequency, mean, cross-analysis, independent sample t-test, one-way variance analysis, and multiple regression analysis with IBM SPSS statistics 27. The results showed that 67.0% of UAE elderly users have chronic diseases such as high blood pressure (16.2%), heart disease (3.8%), diabetes (32.4%), or arthritis (10.5%). Therefore, smart home technology for health management is inevitable to improve overall lifestyles. It was statistically proven that UAE elderly users want automatic fall detection in the living room (39.0%) and bedroom (25.7%). Lifestyle monitoring in living room (44.7%) and bedroom (18.1%); the elderly preferred living room most for daily life assistance (36.2%), environmental control (50.5%), health and biometric monitoring (49.5%), and video conferencing (82.9%). In the case of sensors, elderly preferred the switch at the entrance (36.2%), and motion detecting sensors (42.9%), video cameras (56.2%), and voice recognition (50.5%) sensors in the living room. However, UAE elderly users do not think smart home technology can protect their privacy. It is found that age group and computer technology affinity are the most influential variables and UAE elderly users have an anxiety about technology, which influenced the acceptance of smart home technology.
Highlights
Emirates and the population over 65 is expected to increase to 24.3% by 2030
It is found that age group and computer technology affinity are the most influential variables and UAE elderly users have an anxiety about technology, which influenced the acceptance of smart home technology
This study aims to analyze the behavior of UAE residents to adopting smart home technology based on the previously developed theory of technology acceptance
Summary
Emirates and the population over 65 is expected to increase to 24.3% by 2030. Despite the rapid development of smart home technology, research has been mainly focused on technology development. To encourage conservative elderly users, smart home technology should be implemented for UAE elderly users to accept and integrate it into their daily lives. The objective of this paper is to analyze the preferences and needs of smart home technologies to understand the behaviors of UAE elderly users, and the factors affecting the acceptance of technology. It is found that age group and computer technology affinity are the most influential variables and UAE elderly users have an anxiety about technology, which influenced the acceptance of smart home technology. For the elderly with features such as functional and cognitive impairments, chronic diseases, reduction of social networks, and low physical activity, SHT improves the quality of life, reduces medical expenses, and allows them to live a more sustainable independent life at home [17,18]. Much effort has been made in developing technologies to support the health of the elderly, Much effort has been made in developing technologies to support themonitoring health of the elderly, such as sensor-based networks for measuring physiological signals, activities, such as sensor-based networks for[19,20,21]
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