Opportunities and challenges for Chinese elderly care industry in smart environment based on occupants' needs and preferences

Qingfeng Meng, Ziming Hong, Zhen Li, Xin Hu, Weixiang Shi, Jun Wang, Kai Luo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

New developments in intelligent devices for assisting elderly people can provide elders with friendly, mutual, and personalized interactions. Since the intelligent devices should continually make an important contribution to the smart elderly care industry, smart services or policies for the elders are recently provided by a large number of government programs in China. At present, the smart elderly care industry in China has attracted numerous investors' attention, but the smart elderly care industry in China is still at the beginning stage. Though there are great opportunities in the market, many challenges and limitations still need to be solved. This study analyzes 198 news reports about opportunities and challenges in the smart elderly care industry from six major Chinese portals. The analysis is mainly based on needs assessment for elderly people, service providers, and the Chinese government. It is concluded that smart elderly care services satisfy the elders' mental wants and that needs for improving modernization services are the most frequently mentioned opportunities. Also, the frequently mentioned challenges behind opportunities are intelligent products not being able to solve the just-needed, user-consumption concept and the ability to pay, which is the most frequently mentioned challenge. The results of this study will enable stakeholders in the smart elderly care industry to clarify the opportunities and challenges faced by smart elderly care services in China's development process and provide a theoretical basis for better decision making.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1029
Number of pages10
JournalFrontiers in Psychology
Volume11
Publication statusPublished - 4 Jun 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2020 Meng, Hong, Li, Hu, Shi, Wang and Luo.

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2020 Meng, Hong, Li, Hu, Shi, Wang and Luo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms

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