Perceived Attraction of Online Communities among Elderly People (Track 1, Session 14)
Author(s) :
Tuula Mittil� (Turku School of Economics, Finland)
Maria Antikainen (Tampere University of Technology, Finland)
Abstract : In the last years, the interest towards senior citizens has grown when both academics and business people have discovered that seniors constitute a growing group among the internet users. Online communities have become a way to reach also senior citizens because everyone having the access can visit online communities. Therefore, online communities open new possibilities to interaction for, for example, elderly people who often feel lonely and wish to have more social contacts. To utilize the opportunity seniors need both skills to use technology and computers as well as internet access at home or in such public places as libraries and net cafes. To serve senior citizens, companies and other organizations aiming at designing, building and maintaining online communities for elderly people need information about the special requirements set for the equipment, the architecture as well as the content of the web sites. Device manufacturers and software developers have to take into account elderly people's special characteristics and needs. Therefore, it is important to study elderly people�s perceptions of the factors that attract them to online communities. In this paper we scrutinize elderly people's perceptions of the factors that encourage them to join online communities and, on the other hand, of the factors preventing them from joining the communities. The empirical data was gathered in three online communities by posing questions and linking a web questionnaire in discussion forums aimed for elderly people. The present study of perceived attraction factors conducted among elderly people seems to verify the existence of the factors identified in earlier studies. However, interestingly, such issues as commercial activities, playing, and service variety were not mentioned by the respondents. Also, the low amount of comments concerning technology related, computer usage and online community usability issues called our attention. The reason for that can be that people slowly become more skilled in using the information technology. All in all, social intercommunication received more weight in this study than in earlier studies. Therefore, we suggest that especially non-profit and public organizations could enhance the well-being of elderly people by creating and maintaining online communities. However, profitability of the online communities for elderly people may be questioned.

Menu