Opinions regarding virtual reality among older people in Taiwan

In recent years, older population aged 60 years and above has been increasing from 900 million in 2015 into 2 billion by 2050. With advancing age, older people experience decreasing social activities, decreased physical activities, issues related to mental health, disturbed sleep and overall poor quality of life. Virtual reality has shown applications in healthcare domain to help mitigate these problems. The aim of our study aim is to investigate the opinions of older population about virtual reality through dimensions of technology acceptance model. We used the data generated in our previously published research to measure the opinions of older population toward VR use. Thirty participants of older age group were involved in this study (twenty-four females and 6 males) from March to May 2018. They were exposed to 12 sessions of VR experiences for 15 minutes each, twice a week for 6 weeks. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett's Test were conducted to test the reliability of each questions. From Likert scale analysis, positive opinions (more than 70%) were seen towards the use of VR for entertainment, raising mood, attractiveness and fun to use VR. While the highest choice showing negative opinions in the difficulty of learning to use VR (33.3%). Our study indicates the opinion of older population that they showed positive opinions for all of the TAM variables, the index being 72% to 78.44%. The perceived VR as enjoyable to use, but they still needed time to be skillful in using it. Our study showed that providing training and ease of use is an essential element while introducing VR among older adults.