Understanding the factors affecting online elderly users participation in video UCC services

Abstract

Video user-created content (video UCC) is currently being spotlighted by business practitioners and researchers. However, little consideration is being made on elderly people's adoption of this innovative service. This paper highlights this issue of elderly online users and discovers the factors affecting their participation decisions in video UCC services. This study introduces elderly-specific constructs such as perceived physical condition (physical age), life course events (psycho-social age), perceived user resources, prior similar experience, and computer anxiety, each reflecting the complex aging process. Then, the relationship between these constructs and the conventional constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM) (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and compatibility) is hypothesized and tested. Data was collected from 290 online users older than 50 years of age. The results show that elderly people are not highly resistant to change and will adopt video UCC if some conditions are satisfied. In addition, elderly-specific variables could be good antecedents for conventional TAM constructs, while having direct effects on the intention construct for some cases (perceived physical condition, life course events, and perceived user resources). We believe the implications of this study are important for both researchers and practitioners. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.