Factors Affecting Family Caregivers’ Behavioral Intention to Use Socially Assistive AI Robots for Elderly Care Within Their Own Home Environment

摘要

The necessity of socially assistive AI robots that can assist the elderly in their daily lives to mitigate the burden of family caregivers in aged-care settings continues to increase. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the drivers of family caregivers' behavioral intention to use these types of robots within their own home environment. This study investigates how family caregivers' intention to adopt socially assistive AI robots for their elderly family members can be predicted based on utilitarian and hedonic attitudes, product smartness dimensions, and conscientiousness with demographic characteristics as control variables. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used to process data collected from 399 respondents. The results show that utilitarian and hedonic attitudes positively affect family caregivers' intention to adopt socially assistive AI robots. Moreover, utilitarian attitudes are influenced by ability to cooperate, personality, and conscientiousness, while hedonic attitudes are influenced by autonomy, ability to cooperate, humanlike interaction, and personality. Important implications for developing family caregivers' adopting intention toward socially assistive AI robots are presented based on the findings.