Factors influencing the user acceptance of digital home services

Digital home services provide multimedia entertainment, communication, and healthcare services to the public in order to make their lives more convenient. Many articles predict that the digital home service market will be huge and that many will take advantage of this situation. The purpose of this paper is to identify the future market for digital home services in South Korea by exploring the existing critical information and literature. This study proposes a conceptual model for assessing the adoption of digital home services, for which survey data from 600 heads of households in Korea were collected and used to test the proposed model. This paper also examines customer characteristics and their relationship with the acceptance of digital home services. First, the findings indicate that infra-service is mainly determined by age, region, job, family type, house type, and attitude towards adoption of new products. Second, home entertainment service is also significantly affected by gender, age, region, family type, family member, house type, and attitude towards adoption of new products. Third, home healthcare service was positively affected by gender, region, job, and usage period of high-speed internet. This study may provide companies with valuable guidelines for the implementation of digital home services. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.