ArticlePublisher preview available

The Impact of IoT Smart Home Services on Psychological Well-Being

Information Systems Frontiers

June 2022
24(3):1-18

DOI:10.1007/s10796-021-10118-8

Authors:

Tiago Oliveira

NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS)

Manoj A. Thomas

The University of Sydney

Smart home services are a new generation of consumer services. Supported by the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, they deliver security, comfort, entertainment, assisted living, and efficient management of the home to improve the quality of life of consumers. As the availability of smart home services expands, there is still a lack of understanding of what motivates their continuing use and how the penetration of smart devices and services in the home environment affects individual well-being. We develop a research model combining hedonic and eudaimonic motivations with the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT 2) to evaluate the impacts on well-being. The model is estimated using partial least squares based on a sample of 260 survey responses. The results show that hedonic motivation associated with the adoption of some smart home services moderates continuing use. Additionally, the results suggest a positive relationship between the use of IoT smart home services and well-being. Furthermore, hedonic and eudaimonic motives have a substantial effect on the use behavior of smart home services and ultimately on well-being.

Conceptual model of psychological well-being

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Research model. The constructs in the dotted box are independent variables based on UTAUT2. The dependent variable, well-being (WB) is assessed by combining the UTAUT2 constructs with hedonic motivation (HM) and eudiamonicm motivation (EM)

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Structural model evaluation results. Note: PE - Performance Expectation; SI - Social Influence; PV - Price Value; FC – Facilitating Conditions; Ha - Habit; BI - Behavior Intention; HM - Hedonic Motivation; EM - Eudaimonic Motivation; UB – Use Behavior; WB - Wellbeing

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Moderation effect of hedonic motivation between behavior intention and use behavior

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The Impact of IoT Smart Home Services on Psychological Well-Being

Helder Sequeiros

&Tiago Oliveira

&Manoj A. Thomas

Accepted: 14 February 2021 / Published online: 10 March 2021

#The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract

Smart home services are a new generation of consumer services. Supported by the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, they

deliver security, comfort, entertainment, assisted living, and efficient management of the home to improve the quality of life of

consumers. As the availability of smart home services expands, there is still a lack of understanding of what motivates their

continuing use and how the penetration of smart devices and services in the home environment affects individual well-being. We

develop a research model combining hedonic and eudaimonic motivations with the unified theory of acceptance and use of

technology 2 (UTAUT 2) to evaluate the impacts on well-being. The model is estimated using partial least squares based on a

sample of 260 survey responses. The results show that hedonic motivation associated with the adoption of some smart home

services moderates continuing use. Additionally, the results suggest a positive relationship between the use of IoT smart home

services and well-being. Furthermore, hedonic and eudaimonic motives have a substantial effect on the use behavior of smart

home services and ultimately on well-being.

Keywords IoT .Smart home services .Well-being .Hedonic motivation .Eudaimonic motivation

1 Introduction

Advances in electronic hardware miniaturization and mass

production have paved way for the proliferation of informa-

tion and communication technologies (ICT). Particularly over

the last decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has

rapidly evolved resulting in an abundance of related products

and services. IoT technology encompasses all ‘smart’devices

that have basic computational capabilities and communication

functionalities along with features that enable interactivity

with the environment, people, and other devices (Hsu and

Lin 2016). A subset of IoT technology targets the household

environment, giving rise to the term ‘smart home’-in

reference to homes where several domestic appliances are

connected through the use of IoT technologies (Kim et al.

2017).

Several commercial interests have pushed the development

of the smart home market. For instance, the European market

for smart homes amounts to 15.171 M€with a household

penetration of 12.2% in 2019 and anticipated to reach

31.717 M€with a penetration rate of 24.6% in 2023 (Statista

2018). Today, mobile carriers and cable TV businesses, facing

stagnation from traditional market models, seek new business

models to expand revenue streams, and IoT smart home prod-

ucts and services presents a substantive appeal with great po-

tentials (Park et al. 2018). Technology giants such as Google,

Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, AT&T, and others have devel-

oped strategies to monetize on the smart home market. They

also recognize that smart home services present the opportu-

nity to gather rich data on the consumer base (ABI 2018).

Governmental agencies also have vested interest in smart

homes. Many countries have implemented strategies to bal-

ance impacts of climate change and fluctuations of energy

prices by investing in the development of smart grid and smart

cities. Related infrastructure taps into the smart home market

to provide better services to citizens, including energy moni-

toring and waste management (Balta-Ozkan et al. 2014). In

Europe, the European Commission included smart homes as

one of the ten priority action areas in their Strategic Energy

Technology Plan (European-Commission 2015).

*Manoj A. Thomas

manoj.thomas@sydney.edu.au

Helder Sequeiros

heldersequeiros@yahoo.com; m2016867@novaims.unl.pt

Tiago Oliveira

toliveira@novaims.unl.pt

NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS),

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus de Campolide,

1070-312 Lisbon, Portugal

The University of Sydney Business School, Rm 4047, Abercrombie

Bldg H70, Darlington, NSW 2006, Australia

Information Systems Frontiers (2022) 24:1009–1026

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-021-10118-8

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

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