A Research on the Differences of Consumers on Socio-Demographic Characteristics: The Internet of Things (IoT) Smart Homes

Abstract

Due to the huge potential market demand and rapid technological growth as humans aspire to live in a seamless connected world, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as one of the most popular research topics. Amongst all applications of IoT, Smart Homes has been developed in order to provide home automation, such as intelligent electronic devices and lighting, or voice control over the devices. However, despite a significant number of investments having been invested in its development, IoT Smart Homes is still not an influential threat to traditional conventional houses. Grounded by the Value-Based Adoption Model, this study focused on perceived benefits, perceived sacrifice, perceived value and adoption intention, and strived to examine the differences of individuals in Smart Homes adoption decision in the Malaysia context. Indeed, the sub-dimensions of perceived benefits, namely perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and perceived facilitating condition; and perceived sacrifice such as perceived privacy risk, perceived technicality, perceived innovation resistance and perceived fee, were also explored. In addition, due to the growing attention on environmental issues in the recent decades, environmental innovativeness and environmental concern were also studied. The result of analysis showed that individuals were significantly different based on their socio-demographic background. Implications of study were also discussed and recommendations were given based on the research findings.