Acceptance of aging-in-place technologies: The role of subjective age, subjective health, and care experiences

Technologies to support older people living at home are becoming more and more relevant, yet not all factors that influence their acceptance are researched in-depth. The objective of the present study was to investigate how subjective age, subjective health and experiences as caregiver or care receiver are associated with the current use and perceived usefulness of different aging-in-place technologies. The data were acquired through a representative survey conducted at the end of 2020 with 616 persons aged 40–98 in a trilingual Northern Italian province. Multivariate binary logistic and linear regression analyses showed that only subjective health (b = 0.41, p = .017) and experiences as a caregiver (b = 0.85, p = .001) are positively associated with the current use of aging-in-place technologies. The usefulness assessments of four aging-in-place technology scenarios were predicted by subjective age (b = -1.80, p = .046), subjective health (b = -0.34, p = .031) and experience as a caregiver (b = -0.95, p = .013 and b = -0.48, p = .030). The influencing role of subjective age on acceptance factors regarding aging-in-place technologies seems to be weaker than that of the two health-and care-related variables. Future research should further investigate how the acceptance of aging-in-place technologies varies with different levels of technical complexity, and the focus on health or caregiving, in order to help improve their integration into the lives of older adults.