Examination of the elderly’ behavioral intention toward service technology during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea

초록

For the elderly population, the ever-growing consumers of tourism, technology has played a vital role through the pandemic while new forms of service technology sustained the hospitality and tourism industry through the pandemic and presents opportunities for future business paradigm shift. Therefore, it would be of great interest for the hospitality & tourism professionals to gain understanding of the elderly’s behavior toward adoption and usage of service technology during the pandemic. The objectives of this study were 1) to determine the most influential factor behind the elderly’s behavioral intention (BI) to use service technology over the current pandemic; 2) to examine the moderating effects of age on the three core determinants of BI, i.e., performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), and social influence (SI); 3) to compare the elderly’s BI against the mid-aged & the younger age group. Through a self-administered online survey, responses from 789 participants across the three age groups were used for data analysis utilizing descriptive analysis, factor analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicated that 1) SI was the most influential factor behind the elderly’s BI; 2) the impact of PE increased toward the younger groups while the SI’s impact grew toward the older groups; 3) in contrast to the elderly, for both the mid-aged and the younger group, PE was the most influential factor. Based on these results, specific measures of SI are recommended for further encouragement of the elderly’s use of service technology. Implications, limitations along with recommendations for future studies are discussed.

키워드