earticle

영어

This study starts from the question, “Are people of the age 60 and over equally ‘old?’ ” As the aging population has rapidly become a global issue, it is a timely question to think about whether it is appropriate to classify people aged 60 and over as senior citizens monolithically based on their chronological age. Thanks to the advancement of medical technology and ever-increasing life expectancy, there may be more differences than we thought in terms of cognitive and behavioral patterns among the elderly population. In order to further investigate this question, this study focuses on technology acceptance behavior of 132 participants over the age of 60 towards a wearable healthcare device. The results show that there were interesting behavioral differences among participants depending on their cognitive capabilities. More specifically, participants with high cognitive capability (Superagers) consider the usefulness and the social aspects (social norm and image) of using wearable healthcare technology. Whereas for those with relatively low cognitive capability (non-Superagers), usefulness of using the technology was not a significant factor, and they mainly considered social norm and image. Our findings imply that the current monolithic application of chronological age to classify the elderly population should be carefully reconsidered because people aged over 60 years old may not always share homogeneous cognitive and behavioral patterns.