People's Attitudes to Robots in Caring for the Elderly

We analyse people's attitudes to robots to be used in caring for the elderly using Eurobarometer data relating to November/December 2014 on approximately 1000 people in each EU country. Given the constraints on public expenditure this is one solution to meeting increased obligations in this area. People tend to be lukewarm to robotic care for the elderly. However, a simple average hides the fact that many people, young and old, are totally hostile to the concept and a smaller number totally in favour. Consistent with the literature we find the young to be more in favour of this option than the elderly themselves. There are other differences with males, those in cities and the more educated being more in favour as well as differences between countries. Thus in three French speaking countries there is relatively little evidence of differences in attitudes between young and old. These differences between different groups of people are found to widen with age, which represents a new finding in the literature.