What is Elderly Citizens

The motivating factors that influence patient portal acceptance among the elderly are not well understood. Using the social heuristic theory, the elaboration likelihood model, and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, this study proposes a model that examines the persuasive mechanisms for the elderly to use patient portals. An empirical study involving 117 subjects in the United States was used to test the proposed model. Using the partial least squares method, social power, and imitate-the-successful social heuristics were found to significantly influence patient portal acceptance among the elderly. These findings indicate that older people invest less effort cognitively elaborating when presented with technology acceptance decisions and accept influence from their higher status peers from their network. Imitate-the-majority heuristics and central route processing were not found to be significant, implying that older people are more inclined to take advice from sources, which they find credible and invest less cognitive effort in evaluating the complex phenomena.