Impact of Individual Differences on the Adoption of Smart Homes

Abstract

AbstractWith the advancement of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, the concept of Smart homes has become widely common. Smart Homes act as an intelligent house with the ability to acquire knowledge about inhabitants to adapt and meet the goals of efficiency and automation. However, with this wide advancement in Smart Home technologies, there is a gap between early adopters and the mass market. Prior research on IoT has focused on the technical functionalities of the IoT, the communication standards, and the security protocols. Some previous attempts have used established adoption models to analyze the user acceptance and adoption of IoT and Smart Home Technologies. However, none of them have studied the individual differences between users as antecedents impacting the intention to adopt and use smart home technologies. This research explores and integrates the level of importance of different tasks at home to form a positive factor named Perceived Task Necessity. In addition, drawing from previously validated research, Privacy & Security Risk, and Trust are introduced as antecedents of perceived behavioral control. Then integrated with the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Big-Five Factors personality model to propose a theoretical model to explain the users’ intention to adopt and use Smart Home Technologies. A 32-item survey measure is built to test the proposed model and validate the hypotheses. The instrument is being tested in an online survey. The results of the survey will be used to verify the validity of the proposed model and show the relationship between the individual differences, the perceived task necessity, and their attitude with the intention to adopt and use Smart Home Technologies.KeywordsInternet of ThingsHome automationSmart homesTechnology disruptionTheory of planned behaviorConscientiousnessPerceived task necessity