Knowledge, Perceived Benefits, Adoption, and Use of Smart Home Products

What are the relationships between knowledge of, perceived benefits, adoption of, and use of smart home products? To explore this question, in our first two studies we focus on the general population’s perceptions of benefits across many types of smart home products by creating a corpus of smart home product descriptions. Study 1 (n = 399) shows that previous product knowledge influences a range of perceived benefits. Study 2 (n = 242) demonstrates which benefits increase non-owners’ likelihood of adopting these products. In study 3, we longitudinally survey eight residents in living laboratory houses equipped with 10 integrated smart home products. We find over a year access to the products increases perceptions of their benefits, but does not increase their actual use. Collectively, these studies contribute to an increased understanding of the relationship among benefits, use, and adoption of this emerging technology.