Barriers and facilitators to smart home adoption

This paper explores the social barriers and facilitators to smart home adoption with an analysis of public attitudes. Smart home services aim to improve the comfort, convenience and safety of householders, as well as allowing them to use energy more efficiently and cope with increasing costs. Despite the existence of smart homes and smart home technologies for some time, their prevalence is not widespread, and thus their potential largely untapped. Using in-depth deliberative public workshops this paper explores social barriers and facilitators to smart home technology, and how views vary by socio-economic status, expertise, life-stage and location. The research highlights the importance of themes such as environmental context, older housing stock, city living, perceptions of new homes, financial pressures/exclusion, lack of trust, and acceptability of smart home services.