Exploring Factors Influencing Older Adults’ Willingness to Use Robo-Advisors

This exploratory study investigated factors that influence older adults’ (aged 50 or above) willingness to use robo-advisor, a type of financial technology (“FinTech”). In recent years, it has been receiving increasing attention from users because it is democratizing financial services. Many studies have been conducted on user adoption of robo-advisors. Only few empirical studies investigated how users’ literacy skills and behavioural traits affect their intentions to adopt robo-advisors, but none focusing on older population. In this study we collected survey data from 154 older adults living across United States. Our data analysis showed that trust and anxiety are significantly related to older adults’ willingness to use robo-advisors. Surprisingly, in contrast to many empirical findings, we found that eliteracy is negatively related to older adults’ willingness to use this technology. Based on these findings, we offered discussion regarding future direction for FinTech development and research to benefit the older demographics