Which Factors Form Older Adults' Acceptance of Mobile Information and Communication Technologies?

Technology acceptance has become a key concept for the successful rollout of technical devices. Though the concept is intensively studied for nearly 20 years now, still, many open questions remain. This especially applies to technology acceptance of older users, which are known to be very sensitive to suboptimal interfaces and show considerable reservations towards the usage of new technology. This study investigates long- und short-term effects on technology acceptance for a personal digital assistant (PDA) in older users. We examined the influence of users' personal factors (computer expertise, technical self-confidence) on acceptance (long-term effects). To assess short-term effects on acceptance, PDA acceptance was measured, after participants were given a PDA tutor training and interacted with a simulated PDA. According to the findings, individual factors largely determine people's acceptance showing that acceptance is mainly influenced by the individuals' learning history with technology. Though, also the tutorial training significantly affected acceptance outcomes, especially in the older group.