Abstract

Modern societies share two common trends: First, elderly people
form a strongly growing group in the population (societal aging)
and, second, the importance of information and communication
technology is growing rapidly. However, the elderly are often
excluded from benefiting from IT-enabled service delivery: An
age-related digital divide exists. Current research lacks
understanding what reasons prevent elderly to use the internet.
Therefore, this paper examines the intention to use the internet in
a private manner among the elderly. For higher explanatory power
we also included two other age-groups (G1: <40; G2: 40-59;
G3: >59). Here, we build a survey instrument based on the Model
of Acceptance of Technology in Households (MATH) and test the
model against comprehensive survey data (n=501). We find out
that MATH is able to explain between 42% and 81% of the
variance in private internet usage intention. Moreover, several
differences in driver for usage intention exist, e.g. was the
importance of applications for fun much higher in the first age
group than among the other. Potentially fruitful avenues for future
research are discussed.

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