BEYOND THE DEVICE: B2G ECOSYSTEMS AND HUMAN-IN-THE-LOOP SERVICES FOR CARE ROBOTS IN SOUTH KOREA’S SILVER ECONOMY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62985/j.huit_ojs.vol26.no3E.583Từ khóa:
Silver Economy, care robots, B2G ecosystem, Technology Acceptance Model, South Korea, Human-in-the-loop.Tóm tắt
South Korea faces an unprecedented demographic crisis, with the elderly population projected to reach 37% by 2050, coinciding with a collapse in traditional family support systems rooted in Confucian filial piety. While the “Silver Economy” is rapidly expanding, a paradox remains: high-tech care robots are often unaffordable for the low-income seniors who need them most. This study investigates the mechanisms of “Business-to-Government” (B2G) care ecosystems, specifically SK Telecom’s “Happy Community AI Care” and the “Hyodol” companion robot, in bridging the gap between technological cost and social accessibility for elderly care. Adopting a mixed-method approach grounded in an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and service-dominant logic, we analyze secondary demographic, cost, and program evaluation data across three Korean B2G care robot programs through a multiple case study design. Our findings indicate that the B2G-subsidized model is associated with substantial “cost-avoidance” for government healthcare spending: per-capita elderly care costs are estimated to be 89.3% lower under a probability-weighted counterfactual (up to 93.4% for those at risk of institutionalization), while technology abandonment rates appear markedly higher in the absence of continuous human-in-the-loop support. The results are consistent with the view that sustainability of care robots is associated more strongly with “Service Design” (the seamless integration of AI monitoring with human social workers) than with hardware sophistication alone.
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