Social Robots Acceptance and Marketability in Italy and Germany: A Cross-National Study Focusing on Assisted Living for Older Adults

Fracasso, Francesca and Buchweitz, Lea and Theil, Arthur and Cesta, Amedeo and Korn, Oliver (2022) Social Robots Acceptance and Marketability in Italy and Germany: A Cross-National Study Focusing on Assisted Living for Older Adults. International Journal of Social Robotics. ISSN 1875-4791

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Abstract

In the last years, social robots have become a trending topic. Indeed, robots which communicate with us and mimic human behavior patterns are fascinating. However, while there is a massive body of research on their design and acceptance in different fields of application, their market potential has been rarely investigated. As their future integration in society may have a vast disruptive potential, this work aims at shedding light on the market potential, focusing on the assistive health domain. A study with 197 persons from Italy (age: M = 67.87; SD = 8.87) and Germany (age: M = 62.15; SD = 6.14) investigates cultural acceptance, desired functionalities, and purchase preferences. The participants filled in a questionnaire after watching a video illustrating some examples of social robots. Surprisingly, the individual perception of health status, social status as well as nationality did hardly influence the attitude towards social robots, although the German group was somewhat more reluctant to the idea of using them. Instead, there were significant correlations with most dimensions of the Almere model (like perceived enjoyment, sociability, usefulness and trustworthiness). Also, technology acceptance resulted strongly correlated with the individual readiness to invest money. However, as most persons consider social robots as “Assistive Technological Devices” (ATDs), they expected that their provision should mirror the usual practices followed in the two Countries for such devices. Thus, to facilitate social robots’ future visibility and adoption by both individuals and health care organisations, policy makers would need to start integrating them into official ATDs databases.

Item Type: Article
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-022-00884-z
Dates:
DateEvent
14 April 2022Accepted
2 June 2022Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords: Assistive technological devices; Social robots acceptance; Social robots marketability; Ambient assisted living
Subjects: CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science
Divisions: Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment > School of Computing and Digital Technology
Depositing User: Arthur Theil
Date Deposited: 06 Jun 2022 16:05
Last Modified: 22 Mar 2023 12:00
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/13271

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