Understanding the influencing factors and mechanism of social compensation for Chinese older adults using social media in the context of smart home: a qualitative analysis

Frontiers in Public Health

Public Health

Francesco Ermanno Guida¹  Renke He²  Meng Gao²  Ke Ma² 

[1] Design Department, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy;School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China;

关键词: compensation theory;    social media;    social compensation;    smart screen technology for smart homes;    Chinese older adults;    grounded theory;    qualitative analysis;    users’ acceptance behavior;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2023.1174920

 received in 2023-02-27, accepted in 2023-08-07,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

As a new generation of necessary terminals for future homes, smart homes have become one of the essential mediums for smart aging at home. This paper aims to explore how older adults who age at home can overcome the digital divide of the new medium and achieve social participation in the home context to realize active aging. Based on the theory of social compensation, we select the smart-home smart screen, a representative new medium product in China, and carry out open coding, spindle coding, selective coding, and theoretical construction of the original interview data through the grounded theory research method. The results show that the main factors affecting the social compensation of older adults to smart home social media include user interface quality, interaction quality, content quality, and service quality, and these four factors are used as external variables to compensate older adults socially, thereby stimulating the emotional experience and perception changes at the cognitive level of older adults and then affecting the adoption and acceptance of smart home social media by older adults. This study refines the factors influencing the older adults’ use of smart home social media from the perspective of social compensation. It explains the mechanism of acceptable behavior of older adults, bridging the gap in previous literature on the influencing factors and behavioral mechanisms of older adults of smart home social media. This paper provides a theoretical basis and guidance for the subsequent academic research and software development practice of social media under new technological devices to further help older adults in China achieve active and healthy aging.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Ma, Gao, Guida and He.