A cross cultural investigation of individuals’ acceptance of Smart Home Technology: The role of needs satisfaction

Abstract

Smart Home Technology manufacturers currently face significant issues with regard to the acceptance and intention to use their products. Evidence suggests that specific products have the lion’s share of the smart home market, and fully integrated smart home set-ups are still rare. The aim of this study was to investigate the acceptance of Smart Home Technology by administering the Technology Acceptance Model and applying Self Determination Theory with a sample of British (N = 284) and Spanish (N= 209) technology users. Results showed that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness act as mediators of the effect of need satisfaction on respondents’ behavioural intention to use Smart Home Technology. Except for relatedness satisfaction, there were no gender effects; however, we found important differences between the British and Spanish participants, which are discussed in terms of cultural differences in the degree to which need satisfaction is important to participants.

Culturally Informed Technology: Assessing Its Importance in the Transition to Smart Sustainable Cities

“…It is interesting to note that, over the past twenty years or so, there has been an almost total inversion of the perception of the role of regionality in the development of smart cities. At one point, in the early 2000s, the smart city was considered a generic, and universally applicable, concept that was defined only by technology, rather than by geographical or cultural context [29,30]. In more recent years, however, as the global understanding of smart technologies has matured, and the idea of the smart sustainable city has begun to take shape, the criticality of local factors in the development of smart cities has begun to be recognised [47,48].…”

“…In more recent years, however, as the global understanding of smart technologies has matured, and the idea of the smart sustainable city has begun to take shape, the criticality of local factors in the development of smart cities has begun to be recognised [47,48]. The social, economic and sustainability benefits of powerful and emerging communications technologies have been shown to vary according to geography and regional culture [49,50], and it has also been shown that smart services have higher rates of adoption when aligned to cultural preferences [29,30]. This stresses the point, already made, that smart sustainable city planners and strategists should prioritise the selection and adaption of culturally aligned technologies, if they are to maximise public acceptance and societal benefit [51,52].…”

“…Since the emergence of the digital computer in the 1960s, digital technology has become ever-more integral to global society, such that, by January 2024, 66.2% of the world's population (5.35 billion people) had access to the Internet [28]. However, this access and usage is not evenly distributed [29,30], and some regions of the world are therefore more advanced than others in their implementation of smart city technology. This creates a key challenge for governments: on the one hand, the less advanced regions are those which could potentially benefit most from smart city implementation [31,32], while, on the other hand, it is particularly important, in these areas, to understand the human factors which affect acceptance.…”