Assessing Acceptance of Assistive Social Agent Technology by Older Adults: the Almere Model

Abstract

This paper proposes a model of technology acceptance that is specifically developed to test the acceptance of assistive social agents by elderly users. The research in this paper develops and tests an adaptation and theoretical extension of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by explaining intent to use not only in terms of variables related to functional evaluation like perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, but also variables that relate to social interaction. The new model was tested using controlled experiment and longitudinal data collected regarding three different social agents at elderly care facilities and at the homes of older adults. The model was strongly supported accounting for 59-79% of the variance in usage intentions and 49-59% of the variance in actual use. These findings contribute to our understanding of how elderly users accept assistive social agents.

Robots in Education and Care of Children with Developmental Disabilities: A Study on Acceptance by Experienced and Future Professionals

“…In this study, our objective was to evaluate the participant perception, attitude and intention of use a SAR platform in their profession. To this end we adopted the UTAUT model as proposed by Heerink et al [54], which has been widely used for the evaluation of SAR platforms and has been found to be highly reliable in several previous studies (among others: [25,[55][56][57][58]). …”

Socially Assistive Robot Exercise Coach: Motivating Older Adults to Engage in Physical Exercise

“…The ratings for both measures were found to be significantly more positive than a neutral evaluation (enjoyableness: t[52]=2.81, p<.01; usefulness: t[50]=3.64, p<.001). These results illustrate the effectiveness of the system in promoting intrinsic motivation within the users to engage in the healthcare task (intrinsic motivation is characterized by enjoyment [18]), and in guiding the task-driven interaction towards achieving beneficial health outcomes for the user.…”

“…While previous studies have investigated the positive effect of physical embodiment within the context of human-agent interaction (e.g., [15], [16], [17]), most have recruited a participant pool consisting primarily of young adults. Embodiment studies that have targeted the elderly population include the work of Heerink et al [18], which investigated the acceptance of assistive social agents by older adults. While similar to our work, the robot used in their evaluation was a table-top robot (the iCat), and was either controlled via a human operator during interaction with elderly users (Wizard of Oz study), or, like their screen agent, interacted with users through a touch-screen interface.…”

How elderly users of a socially interactive robot experience adaptiveness, adaptability and user control

“…c) The robot told the women she had not taken her medication in time and asked if he should remind her. We measured the adaptivity and the usefulness of the system as perceived by the participants as well as their anxiety and their intention to use the robot with questionnaire items as used in the Almere model [17]. This model has been developed to predict and explain acceptance of social assistive robots and the questionnaire has been validated.…”

“…This makes adaptivity a reoccurring requirement in projects concerning eldercare technology in general [9,13,14] and more specific in robot and screen agent technology [10,[15][16][17]. There is however an issue that needs to be addressed, concerning both the interpretation of the concept of and the response to adaptive technology.…”