Understanding the effect of self-perception of aging on older individuals’ attitude toward technology and mobile shopping app usage intention: exploring the moderating role of openness to experience

• Main Author: Tan, Jie Zhe
• Other Authors: Elison Lim
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Social Sciences; Older individuals; Technology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/176608
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The aging population has increasingly garnered attention in today’s society. However, although many efforts have been made to study the well-being of the older population, research studying the older population and technology is relatively limited. Since technology increasingly plays a critical role in people’s daily routines, the older population who are more vulnerable to the rapid changes of technology may encounter many inconveniences in their daily lives if they are not proficient in technology. To address this gap, the present study investigated whether the older individuals’ loss and gain in their self-perception of aging (i.e., Decline SPA and Growth SPA) contribute to their attitude toward technology. Given that a mobile shopping app is one of the most commonly used applications on people’s smartphones (BuildFire, 2024), and it may bring a lot of advantages to the older population’s daily lives, this study also examined the effect of SPA on older individuals’ usage intention of mobile shopping apps. In addition, openness to experience was considered to play a moderating role in these relationships. The present study used a between-subject design, and participants were recruited from the online platform, Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The final sample consisted of 59 older individuals aged 50 years old and above. The data were analyzed using multiple regression analyses. The results showed that only Growth SPA and openness to experience significantly predicted the older individuals’ attitude toward technology and their usage intention of mobile shopping apps. The implications and limitations of the present study were discussed at the end of this paper.