JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The European Union is currently facing a demographic, digital, and environmental transition-collectively known as the Triple Transition. While these trends significantly impact Long-Term Care services, they have typically been studied in isolation, overlooking potential synergies between digital tool adoption and environmental practices among informal caregivers of older adults. This study uniquely bridges this gap by applying an integrative Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems framework to examine how these transitions interact in everyday caregiving contexts.

Objective:

This study examined the relationship between digital tool use and eco-friendly practices among informal caregivers of older adults across the European Union and investigated whether the usage of digital solutions interacts differently with specific types of eco-friendly behaviors. Unlike previous research focusing on isolated aspects of each transition, our study specifically investigates their interconnections, providing empirical evidence for developing integrated policy approaches.

Methods:

Using data from the Survey of Gender Gaps in Unpaid Care, Individual and Social Activities project (n=5,761 informal caregivers of adults aged 65+), we analyzed the association between frequency of digital tool use for caregiving and environmental practices. We employed the Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems conceptual framework and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to interpret findings. Analyses included descriptive statistics, Spearman correlations, and multilevel mixed-effects regression models.

Results:

It was found a significant positive association between digital tool use frequency and environmentally sustainable behaviors (ρ=0.28, p<0.001). The usage of digital solutions showed strongest associations with consumption-related behaviors (fair trade products, ρ=0.30; used items, ρ=0.30; eco-friendly products, ρ=0.24), moderate effects on waste management and transportation choices, and weakest relationships with recycling (ρ=0.05) and resource conservation (ρ=0.06). Respondents using digital tools on a daily basis scored 22% higher on their overall Environmentally Sustainable Behavior score compared to non-users. Demographic patterns revealed higher digital tool adoption among younger, more educated, and employed caregivers, suggesting unevenly distributed benefits of digital-environmental synergies across the caregiver population.

Conclusions:

This study reveals important interconnections between digital and environmental transitions in caregiving contexts. Digital tools may enhance caregivers’ environmental behaviors by influencing attitudes through improved access to environmental information, shaping subjective norms via participation in online caregiver communities where sustainable practices are encouraged, and increasing perceived behavioral control by making eco-friendly options easier to access and implement. The differential impact across environmental behavior categories suggests digital solutions alone cannot overcome structural barriers to certain environmental practices, such as lack of public recycling facilities or limited access to low-carbon transport infrastructure. Our findings challenge the siloed approach to addressing sustainability transitions, demonstrating that investments in digital literacy and access for caregivers could yield co-benefits across multiple transition domains, while requiring careful attention to prevent exacerbation of existing inequalities.