Grey digital divide: factors associated with older people’s use of the Internet for financial transactions in the UK

Purpose:
Grey digital divide is becoming a major challenge in today’s world where everyone is expected to be tech savvy in order to use the Internet and digital technologies for everyday living. Vulnerable people, especially older people, encounter several issues with online financial services such as online banking, online shopping, insurance policies, etc. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the factors related to online financial services through literature review and interviews and cluster them in four different sections: human, technology, society and the institutions that provide digital financial services.

Design/methodology/approach:
Through literature review, this research establishes some of the factors that could act as barriers or facilitators in using digital financial services which leads to the classification of four main areas that are presented visually. Subsequently, 22 semi-structured interviews with older people (those aged 65+) and intermediaries resulted in identifying further factors.

Findings:
The findings procured from the thematic analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews are mapped onto the four main classified areas to identify the novel and common factors and a conceptual model was formed from this merging process.

Originality/value:
This type of model has not been developed yet. Hence, this model could be leveraged for undertaking additional research on the interconnections between the factors and investigating to what extent they can positively or negatively influence individuals in the adoption of online financial services.