Study on Middle Aged People’s Use of and Attitudes toward Kiosk

Abstract

Purpose. Kiosks have been more frequently used in our daily life related with restaurants, hospitals, ticketing, banks, public institutions, etc., as the gerontechnology has been developed and non-contact services have been increased, due to COVID-19. Middle-aged people who are relatively unfamiliar with digital technology face many difficulties in the circumstance in which kiosks are more generally used. The ‘Survey on Digital Competence of Seoul Citizens’ conducted by the Seoul Digital Foundation shows that 94% of people under age 55 have used kiosks, while only 45.8% of people over age 55 have used it(Seoul Digital Foundation, 2022), indicating the disparity in the use of digital. On the other hand, although there are many studies and educational materials on kiosks for the elderly, along with the increase of the aging population, there are few studies and educational materials on middle-aged people. The digital competence is only studied around the metropolitan area, but there is no research on it has been conducted around rural and urban complex and small cities. This study, therefore, aims to examine middle-aged people’s use of and attitudes toward kiosks, who live in rural and urban complex cities and provide basic data of how to enhance the quality of senior life by improving the digital equality and using the gerontechnology.

Method. This study received 224 responses from middle aged people in their 40-64, who live in the western region of Gyeongsangbuk-do, including Gimcheon-si, Gumi-si, Sangju-si, Mungyeong-si and Seongju-gun, by using the Google form. The frequency and cross analysis on the collected data about education and middle aged people’s use of and attitudes toward kiosks were conducted by using SPSS 20.0.

Results and Discussion. The respondents were divided by their gender into males(33%) and females(67%), and the ratio of those in their 50s was the highest(46%). The use patterns of middle-aged people were examined to show that females(70.5%), males (54.8%) and those in their 40s(79%), 50s (85.3%) and 60s (33.3%) responded that they have enjoyed the services they wanted by using kiosks. Among the respondents, however, 39.2% are satisfied with the use of kiosks, while 60.8% are unsatisfied with it, due to persons behind them, who hint that they are busy and the complexity of their use guidance. In addition, 87.5% of them have difficulty in accessing and using kiosks, because there are little information about the education of them or are no kiosks around them. Hence, the development of and support for a variety of programs are required to help middle-aged people flexibly adapt to the digital society and activate their access to non-contact services. To this end, related services are necessary for developing and distributing kiosk education program for middle-aged people and providing space for them to directly experience kiosks.  This study has an implication, in that it examines the use of the kiosk, an area of the gerontechnology, to help middle-aged people enjoy convenient and stable old age, by learning digital technology at present when Korea is transformed into a super-aged society. It, however, only selected middle-aged people living in some provinces as its subjects, so the findings are difficult to be generalized to other regions. The future study, thus, needs to examine middle-aged people living in more various regions, by using variables reflecting the characteristics of them and kiosks.