Abstract
In the light of aging societies in developed economies, the use of digital health services by mature adults becomes an ever more important issue. Although multiple offerings exist, the widespread use of these solutions is still considerably low. To the current date, research has not yet a good understanding on the specific behavior of senior citizens when it comes to adoption and use of eHealth services. Our research addresses this issue by analyzing the effect previous work experience with Information Technology (IT) has on the eHealth use of retired citizens. Using a paper based questionnaire, 132 respondents provided information on their previous work exposure to IT, their computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety, and use of digital health services. Our findings underline the strong impact previous work with IT has on eHealth use regardless how long the respondent is already retired. We also found that outcome expectations are a strong mediator on the relationship between self-efficacy and the use of digital health services. This implies that seniors feel that they have all capabilities to use digital health services but only if they see a need to do so.
Recommended Citation
Gewald, Heiko and Rockmann, Robert, "Mature Adults’ Use of Digital Health Services The Role of Prior Computer Experience on eHealth Adoption" (2016). CONF-IRM 2016 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/confirm2016/1