Ambient Intelligence from Senior Citizens’ Perspectives: Understanding Privacy Concerns, Technology Acceptance, and Expectations

Especially for seniors, Ambient Intelligence can provide assistance in daily living and emergency situations, for example by automatically recognizing critical situations. The use of such systems may involve trade-offs with regard to privacy, social stigmatization, and changes of the well-known living environment. This raises the question of how older adults perceive restrictions of privacy, accept technology, and which requirements are placed on Ambient Intelligent systems. In order to better understand the related concerns and expectations, we surveyed 60 senior citizens. The results show that experience with Ambient Intelligence increases technology acceptance and reduces fears regarding privacy violations and insufficient system reliability. While participants generally tolerate a monitoring of activities in their home, including bathrooms, they do not accept commercial service providers as data recipients. A comparison between four exemplary systems shows that camera-based solutions are perceived with much greater fears than wearable emergency solutions. Burglary detection was rated as similarly important assigned as health features, whereas living comfort features were considered less useful.