Can feeling younger increase older adults' technology acceptance?

Abstract

How can marketers persuade older adults to adopt new technology? Although today’s technology revolution presents unforeseen opportunities, older adults are relatively slow to take advantage of them. As their resistance to technology is costly at both individual and societal levels, an effective intervention strategy is called for. In this presentation, I will aim to answer this call by investigating the power of subjective age—how old or young one feels—on older adults’ technology adoption. This research is in its early stage and will only introduce the theoretical background and study design. Recent research suggests that the perception of one’s age is open to situational influences. The momentary shift in subjective age can have important consumer consequences like the preference for contemporary (vs. traditional) options and prosocial behaviours. Building on this new research paradigm and the literature on technology acceptance, I predict that a boost in the feeling of youthfulness (i.e., via experimental manipulation) will increase older adults’ likelihood of adopting new technology. This effect is expected to be mediated by the feelings of selfefficacy and moderated by technology type. I plan to test this prediction through a series of experiments. Participants will be recruited online and randomly assigned to different subjective age conditions (high vs. low). For dependent measures, participants will indicate their attitudes and behavioural intention toward technology. One-way or two-way ANOVA’s will compare the levels of technology acceptance as a function of the subjective age manipulation. Theoretically, the present research contributes to the recent literature on the malleability of subjective age and its impact on consumer behaviour. Further, it adds to the literature on technology acceptance by introducing the novel concept of subjective age. This research also makes practical contributions by suggesting unique intervention strategies that marketers and policymakers can implement to promote older adults’ technology adoption.