Does power posing affect gerontechnology adoption among older adults?

Recognising the rise of an aging population and independent living among older adults, many governments and organisations have developed and promoted new technologies in the form of gerontechnologies to support the needs and enhance the well-being of older adults. However, the adoption of products using such technology remains modest among the aging population. This study introduces the notion of power in the form of power posing and examines its impact on new technology adoption, particularly gerontechnology, among older adults. Using an experimental approach on a sample of older adults exposed to an in-house near-field communication-enabled light system, the study finds that high-power poses have a greater and more positive impact on older adults’ perceived ease of use of, perceived usefulness of, and intentions to use gerontechnology than low-power poses. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

How Trust and Need Satisfaction Motivate Producing User-Generated Content

The motivation of user-generated content (UGC) is a vital issue for social media providers. This study investigates this issue using the self-determination theory (SDT). The SDT identifies three fundamental human psychological needs, namely the need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. This study aims to answer the question of how the satisfaction of these needs motivates users to produce UGC and utilizes the multi-study model comparison approach. Two survey studies were conducted in China and the United States. The partial least squares (PLS) analyses confirmed that the SDT indeed explained UGC motivation significantly and that trust beliefs support people’s need for relatedness. Post hoc analyses showed that there were significant differences between Chinese and American culture. Those results make important contributions to theory and practice. For example, practitioners need to motivate users to produce UGC by supporting their psychological needs. Besides, different trust beliefs should be emphasized in different countries.     

Knowledge-sharing in virtual communities: familiarity,anonymity and self-determination theory

Although the role of motivation has been emphasised in knowledge-sharing literature, traditional motivation theories, such as self-determination theory (SDT), have not been actively used as a research framework in knowledge-sharing research. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first objective is to propose a model, based on SDT, to test the effect of the three basic psychological needs – perceived competence, perceived autonomy and perceived relatedness – on knowledge-sharing behaviours in virtual communities. The second objective is to explore the effects of familiarity and anonymity on the basic psychological needs to better understand individuals’ knowledge-sharing behaviours in virtual communities. The results show that perceived competence and perceived relatedness influence knowledge-sharing behaviours in virtual communities; however, perceived autonomy does not influence knowledge-sharing behaviours; familiarity influences positively perceived competence and perceived relatedness, and anonymity influences negatively perceived autonomy and perceived relatedness.     

Remote patient monitoring acceptance trends among older adults residing in a frontier state

This pilot study aims to present a methodological approach for investigating remote patient monitoring system acceptance trends for older adults residing in a frontier state. For this purpose, extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) variables, which included subjective norm, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and behavioral intention were investigated using growth curve methods and modern resampling techniques. Results revealed our methodological and analytical approach shows promise for investigating technology acceptance over time on subjects where little literature exists and where recruiting adequate sample sizes for statistical power purposes may be challenging. Results of the data analysis showed there was a significant and reliable linear trend on subjective norm. Time did not predict perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, or behavioral intention, indicating the levels of these factors were high and stable over the course of the study. Older adults accepted remote patient monitoring, and family and friends may influence technology acceptance promoting behaviors. The longer participants used the technology, the more they perceived those important to them would want them to use it. Attention to social influence to optimize the implementation of in-home health monitoring among this population is warranted. Recommendations for future research are provided.     

Motivation in online learning: Testing a model of self-determination theory

As high attrition rates becomes a pressing issue of online learning and a major concern of online educators, it is important to investigate online learner motivation, including its antecedents and outcomes. Drawing on Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory, this study proposed and tested a model for online learner motivation in two online certificate programs (N = 262). Results from structural equation modeling provided evidence for the mediating effect of need satisfaction between contextual support and motivation/self-determination; however, motivation/self-determination failed to predict learning outcomes. Additionally, this study supported SDT’s main theorizing that intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation are distinctive constructs, and found that the direct effect and indirect effects of contextual support exerted opposite impacts on learning outcomes. Implications for online learner support were discussed.     

The role of perceived organizational support,distributive justice and motivation in reactions to new information technology

Despite tremendous investments in information technology (IT), many technological interventions in organizations fail because employees do not fully accept and use IT. The present study explored how perceived organizational support and distributive justice affect employee reactions to new IT from a motivational point of view. Self-determination theory was used to understand how different motivational styles, varying in degree of self-determination, mediate the relationship of perceived organizational support and distributive justice with reactions to new IT. Results showed that perceived organizational support and distributive justice were associated with intrinsic and identified motivation to use the IT, but only POS was related to enjoyment and acceptance of the IT. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were both associated with IT usage, but IT usage was associated with enjoyment and acceptance only when people were intrinsically motivated. Intrinsic motivation also mediated the effects of POS on enjoyment and acceptance. Moreover, intrinsically motivated users were less likely to use a paper-based appointment booking alternative than those who were not. Implications for managing IT implementations are discussed.     

Motivation of computer based learning across adulthood

This research investigates learning motivation of young and old adults. In detail, we explore motives of young and old adults to participate in two ICT-course settings: e-learning and face-to-face courses. In a first study young (n = 53, M = 26.0 years) and old (n = 55, M = 69.8 years) participants of e-learning courses completed an online questionnaire on learning motivation and personality. In a second study young (n = 46, M = 26.7 years) and old (n = 57, M = 69.5 years) participants of face-to-face ICT courses completed the same learning motivation questionnaire and questions about personality, subjective age and life satisfaction. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors of learning motivation: belonging, instrumentality, personal growth, and competition. As expected, older adults expressed stronger motives of belonging and personal growth, and thus expressed a stronger interest in self-determined and intrinsic learning. Young adults, in contrast, strongly endorsed competitive-related motives of learning. Instrumentality was influenced by the interaction of age and subjective age; older participants showed higher instrumentality when the difference between chronological age and subjective age is big. Findings of this study shed new light on assumptions of socioemotional selectivity theory.     

The attitudes,impact, and learning needs of older adults using apps on touchscreen mobile devices: Results from a pilot study

Despite the proliferation in understanding older adults’ acceptance and limitations of Internet technology, the learning needs of older adults living in low Internet usage areas and their acceptance of touchscreen-based apps have lagged behind. This study describes an embedded mixed-method research evaluation of an eight-week touchscreen mobile device training for thirty-nine older adults who were recruited from a community center in a low Internet usage area in southern Taiwan. Among the participants, 20 completed both the pre-test and the post-test and 16 attended the focus group interviews. The design of the training course was based on constructs informed by the diffusion of innovation theory and the technology acceptance model, and it incorporated both a classroom-based and small group tutoring approach. After the training session, the participants reported significantly lower depressive symptom scores compared to baseline. Qualitative interviews reveal the participants’ learning needs related to extended practice, usefulness, and compatibility in adopting touch-screen apps. Findings from this study shed light on the possibility of touchscreen-based apps, including health-, entertainment-, transportation-, and social media-related apps, for improving psychological well-being in older adults with limited Internet experience living in the community. Discussion on their learning needs was also provided.     

Older adults’ use of smart phones: an investigation of the factors influencing the acceptance of new functions

After adopting mobile phones, most older adults use them only for calling and SMS. The purpose of this study is to extend their usage of mobile phones to new functions. To understand older adults’ requirements of mobile phones, a questionnaire was constructed and 351 Chinese older adults were recruited to complete the questionnaires. Data collected through the questionnaires were analysed using explorative factor analysis. The results revealed that older adults’ requirements were composed of 10 factors: Find a Specific Function, Awareness and Attractiveness, Readability, Personal Concern, Soft Keys and Multi-tap, Hardware Capacity, Touch Screen, Concern of Learning, Connectivity, and Social Influence. Then, from the above 10 factors, the 6 most important factors were revealed using multiple linear regression analysis. The results imply that accepting new functions is different from accepting a product. Readability and Find a Specific Function, which are critical for older adults’ acceptance of feature phones, are not determinants of their acceptance of new functions in smart phones.     

Embracing ambiguity in the design of non-stigmatizing digital technology for social interaction among senior citizens

In this paper we report our early experience with the design of technology for senior citizens. We take as our point of departure a pre-study of the ways in which older adult living occurs at three different senior housing facilities in southern Sweden. We contribute to the current debate concerning the ways in which digital technology can be designed to enable new types of living arrangements for the ever growing population of older people. We focus on technology designed to support the social rather than physical challenges of growing older. In particular we discuss how designing for social interaction can circumvent the stigma associated with being lonely in light of diminishing social networks, changed patterns of interactions with family, moving to a new neighbourhood, and the loss of a spouse. We will suggest that designers, in the design of digital technology for social interaction, deliberately leave room for ambiguity to make it possible for people to leave their intentions of use unarticulated. Furthermore, recognizing that many everyday activities already act as enablers for social interaction, we suggest utilizing such activities as an approach for design. We will support our suggestions by introducing three perspectives: a perspective emphasizing that the population of older adults is one of resourceful individuals; a perspective on social interaction emphasizing its circumstantial nature as an inherent part of everyday activities; and a perspective on the role of digital technology emphasizing its role as merely one of many resources present for human action. Finally, we will present an example concept showing how an enhanced TV remote control may be designed to enable social interactions without inflicting too much on the original experience of watching TV and most importantly, without stigmatizing the people using the remote control as lonely individuals craving the company of others.     

Use and Design of Handheld Computers for Older Adults: A Review and Appraisal

This article presents a comprehensive literature review to investigate whether and why older adults accept handheld computers and how to design elderly-friendly handheld computers. Findings about acceptance, input devices, menu and functions, and output devices are summarized. First, older adults were under social pressure to use mobile phones, but they had low acceptance of advanced functions. Also, they had a different way to judge acceptance factors from younger adults. Second, older adults preferred the physical keyboard to the on-screen keyboard for text entry, whereas they preferred tapping the touch pad to the joystick and buttons for pointing tasks. Third, older adults had shallower mental representation of the mobile phone menus than younger adults. Navigation aids providing contextual information and large cognitive preview per screen could help them. Finally, recommended size and spacing for text and icons are presented.     

How does presence influence purchase intention in online shopping markets? An explanation based on self-determination theory

Presence has been regarded as an essential component for understanding individuals’ behaviour in online environments. Drawing upon self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines the impact of presence in online shopping markets. The conceptual model is examined with data collected from TaoBao. The findings indicate that telepresence is positively associated with consumers’ autonomy and stickiness, while social presence is positively associated with consumers’ relatedness and stickiness. Furthermore, stickiness mediates both the relationship between autonomy and purchase intention, and the relationship between relatedness and purchase intention. Having introduced a new perspective of SDT, this study explains how presence significantly influences consumers’ psychological need satisfaction, attitude and behaviour, and confirms the critical role of presence in online shopping markets.     

Developing a pragmatic evaluation of ICTs for older adults with cognitive impairment at scale: the IN LIFE experience

Implementing information and communications technology (ICT) at scale requires evaluation processes to capture the impact on users as well as the infrastructure into which it is being introduced. For older adults living with cognitive impairment, this requires evaluation that can accommodate different levels of cognitive impairment, alongside input from family and formal caregivers, plus stakeholder organisations. The European Horizon 2020 project INdependent LIving support Functions for the Elderly (IN LIFE) set out to integrate 17 technologies into a single digital platform for older people living with cognitive impairment plus their families, care providers and stakeholders. The IN LIFE evaluation took place across six national pilot sites to examine a number of variables including impact on the users, user acceptance of the individual services and the overall platform, plus the economic case for the IN LIFE platform. The results confirmed the interest and need among older adults, family caregivers, formal caregivers and stakeholders, for information and communications technology (ICT). Relative to the baseline, quality of life improved and cognition stabilised; however, there was an overall reluctance to pay for the platform. The findings provide insights into existing barriers and challenges for adoption of ICT for older people living with cognitive impairment.

     

Deriving Workloads for Performance Testing

An approach is presented to compare the performance of an existing production platform and a proposed replacement architecture. The traditional approach to such a comparison is to develop software for the proposed platform, build the new architecture, and collect performance measurements on both the existing system in production and the new system in the development environment. In this paper we propose a new way to design an application-independent workload for doing such a performance evaluation. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by describing our experience using it to help an industrial organization determine whether or not a proposed architecture would be adequate to meet their organization's performance requirements.     

The Ten Shades of Silver: Segmentation of Older Adults in the Mobile Phone Market

With the closing of the age-related gap in mobile phone uptake and the aging of the population, older adults have increasingly become a desirable target group for mobile phone providers. Although there is abundant literature describing the use of mobile phones among older adults, segmentation studies on this group of consumers remain scant and inconclusive. Drawing on the benefit and behavioral segmentation, this study presents a segmentation model of older adults in the mobile phone market that incorporates a wide variety of consumer behavior, attitudinal, and acceptance variables relevant for the understanding of mobile phone (non-)usage patterns among users of feature phones and smartphones, as well as among mobile phone nonusers. The model is based on a hybrid approach with a two-step cluster analysis using data collected by a telephone survey from a representative sample (n = 1,581) of adults aged 55 or older in Slovenia in 2015. The analysis yielded two uniquely profiled clusters within each of the five a priori-determined segments, summing to a total of 10 clusters. The results show that older adults still prefer feature phones. Nevertheless, the mobile phone market has become highly heterogeneous, with clusters of older adults having distinguishable feature phone- and smartphone-use patterns as well as socio-demographic and life-course profiles. Since many of these profiles undermine the notion of older adults as “basic” mobile phone users, our findings represent a solid foundation for scholars and marketers to further investigate their specific needs in relation to more advanced smartphone and mobile internet usage.     

Older adults’ perceptions and experiences of online social support

This paper reports an investigation of older adults’ needs and preferences concerning online social support. We focused our analysis on seven different aspects of online support: Self disclosure, Deep support, Light support, Community building, Information/Facts, Off topic, and Technical issues. For each aspect we were interested in how older adults perceive this aspect of support, what they think are the similarities and differences of this aspect of support in online settings vs offline settings, and what they perceive are the advantages and disadvantages of communicating this aspect of support online. We did this by conducting detailed interviews with three groups of older adults (31 people in total) with different levels of expertise in using the internet and online communication (older adults who do not use the internet, older adults who use only email, and older adults who participate in online support communities). Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed. Our findings describe older adults’ perception of different aspects of support and identify their motivation for turning to online support and the reasons for any reluctance to do so. Thus, our findings give insight into how online support communities could best be utilized to improve older people’s experience with online support.     

Online Social Networking Sites Continuance Intention: A Model Comparison Approach

Retaining existing users and letting them continue to use the current social networking sites (SNSs) have become increasingly challenging for developers. This study takes a model comparison approach to investigate this important issue. Based on technology acceptance model, self-determination theory, and net-valence model, our study develops four models that explain individuals’ continuance intention. Based on the data collected from U.S. SNS users, all four models can predict individuals’ intention reasonably well, and net-valence model with perceived benefits and risks as second-order constructs explains the largest amount of variance of SNS continuance intention. This study is among the first model comparison studies in the SNS continuance area. It is also among the first to apply self-determination theory and net-valence model to investigate SNS continuance.     

The SegBus platform – architecture and communication mechanisms

In this study, we introduce the SegBus architecture, a synchronous segmented bus platform for systems on chip. We present the envisioned structure in detail, and also address aspects of communication on the platform. The motivation behind SegBus is the search for performance improvements, in several directions, such as global throughput, power consumption, modularity, adaptability. By means of an example, we illustrate the capabilities of the described architecture. The implementation strategy targets FPGA technology, and allows for the utilization of multiple clock domains. The platform emerges as a highly design-time configurable system, adaptable to various design constraints.     

A strategic path to study IT use through users’ IT culture and IT needs: A mixed-method grounded theory

We consider recent research in IS, as well as recent advances in the fields of psychology and sociology. As an alternative to existing models, we propose a new strategic path to study IT use through users’ IT culture and IT needs. Our contributions are (1) theoretical: we investigate the predictive value for IT usage of several new constructs and show that both expectancy-based and needs-based theories of motivation should be taken into account in acceptance models, (2) methodological: we adopt an exploratory, mixed-method, grounded theory approach and use both quantitative and qualitative data and methods, an unusual approach in IS research that allows new perspectives, and (3) practical: our results highlight the fact that highly IT-acculturated users may hinder (rather than facilitate) new-IT acceptance if their situational IT needs are ignored. Therefore, when the strategic decision of implementing new IT is made, managerial attention must be focused on these users in order to drive toward the alignment of their IT needs and managerially-perceived organizational IT needs.Our work opens the way to numerous avenues for future research.     

A study on the acceptance of website interaction aids by older adults

The goal of the present work is to investigate the potential acceptance of a set of web interaction aids by older adults, in order to help them overcome difficulties associated with ageing and help them continue using the web as a source of information, communication and services. This paper presents a survey with older adults concerning their perceptions about a set of web interaction aids defined after a field observation study, a study with questionnaires and user tests of web applications. The survey involved 313 participants, of which about 44 % were older adults and elderly users. The results showed that the use of aids to support the interaction of older adults with the web promotes improvements in the interaction of older adults and younger users alike, which supports the argument for enhanced universal usability. Finally, it was possible to diagnose barriers that still remain and which aids had best acceptance by older adults.