Building smart living environments for ageing societies: Decision support for cross-border e-services between Estonia and Finland

Abstract

Rapidly aging societies are exerting pressure on the public and private sectors to provide e-services as integral parts of age-friendly smart living environments (SLEs). It is also recognized that interoperable cross-border e-services can reduce this societal challenge, particularly in more ‘individualistic’ countries in Northern and Western Europe such as Estonia and Finland. This study primarily provides decision support for multiple stakeholders involved in the development and provision of interoperable cross-border e-services and related cross-border data exchange between Estonia and Finland. Given the high complexity of the research questions, this study adopted a constructivist, sociotechnical approach that combined cognitive mapping and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique. Based on two real-world cases, data were collected from two panels of experts who represented regional stakeholders involved in building e-services and age-friendly SLEs in Estonia and Finland. The study results include a multicriteria analysis framework of the context factors and recommendations for determining effective intervention strategies.