JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

While telecare has considerable potential to improve home care services, benefit older adults, and support informal caregivers, its adoption remains limited. There is also a notable gap in the empirical research that examines the factors that influence informal caregivers’ behavioral intention to use telecare. In particular, existing theoretical acceptance models are insufficiently comprehensive, as they do not specifically address informal caregivers of older adults and have largely overlooked the psychosocial outcomes of engaging with telecare.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to advance understanding of telecare acceptability by informal caregivers of older adults by integrating the perceived psychosocial outcomes of telecare engagement into the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model.

Methods:

The study applied nested ordinary least squares regression analysis to survey data collected in 2021 in Slovenia from a sample of 612 informal caregivers of older adults, all aged 40 years or older.

Results:

The regression analysis used three nested models to examine predictors of the intention of informal caregivers of older adults to use telecare. The first model, which included only background variables (burden of care, financial coping, and caregiver sociodemographic characteristics), had limited explanatory power (R² = .03), with financial coping the only significant predictor (β = -.14, P = .005). Adding UTAUT predictors significantly improved the model’s fit (R² = .49, PLR < .001). Performance expectancy (β = .52, P < .001), facilitating conditions (β = .11, P = .005), and social influence (β = .21, P < .001) emerged as additional significant predictors. Incorporating perceived psychosocial outcomes further improved the model’s fit and increased the explained variance (R² = .54, PLR < .001); this additional factor also showed the strongest effect (β = .41, P < .001). While the patterns of relationships between other predictors and the dependent variable remained consistent with the previous models, the inclusion of perceived psychosocial outcomes substantially reduced the effect size of performance expectancy.

Conclusions:

Perceived psychosocial outcomes had the largest effect size of the predictors in the extended UTAUT model, providing substantial evidence that psychosocial outcomes should be included as an acceptance factor to better understand telecare acceptability among informal caregivers. These findings can guide developers, policymakers, and health and social care providers in designing, testing, and deploying telecare tools and solutions and should improve the promotion of telecare technologies and their adoption by informal caregivers.