Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and ICT: Challenges of End-User Adoption of Digital Life

While current information communication technologies and applications have the potential to alleviate some of the societal problems in everyday life, a recent survey shows that most end-users do not see these applications as being able to alleviate the challenges they face in their daily lives. Juxtaposed against CTM’s Digital Life Hierarchy, the survey results suggest that most end-users are in the “Basic Life” category, using ICT predominantly for communications and entertainment. The results of these survey also suggest that the Maslowian Hierarchy of Needs still predominate in most end-users’ lives, and many are concerned with financial security, heath care and education. Thus ICT applications such as tele-health and telemedicine represent potential new areas of high revenue growth for telecom service providers. Introduction Increased computer penetration and high speed access to the Internet in the home has facilitated the potential for consumers and society in general to realize the benefits of “esociety”: increasing access to health care through telemedicine; diminishing the social divide through tele-education; and increasing the quality of life, and competitiveness of the economy through tele-work. Specifically, tele-medicine allows governments to extend universal healthcare services to remote areas and provides an economically viable means to increase the quality of medical services. This is particularly important in the U.S. where an aging population the number of Americans aged between 45 years and 64 has increased by 38% over the past decade. It is estimated that each additional year of life increases health care costs by 3%. This, coupled with the declining number of qualified nurses and doctors, increases the attractiveness of digital home-health applications and services, which could reduce health care costs between 20% and 30% annually. Similarly, tele-education provides governments with the means to increase the level of educational services to resource-strapped inner-cities and the means to extend the learning experience to the homes. And tele-work has the ability to reduce congestion and carbon monoxide emissions, and reducing consumption of petroleum resources. Similarly, although the rapid mobile phone diffusion in some parts of the world seem to exemplify the benefits of anytime/anywhere communications, the question still remains whether mobile data communications actually do intensify or transform the social interactions between people, networks, companies, and organizations through always-on communications and services. And while the current state of technology, albeit not perfect, allows the realization of digital life defined as the state where the virtual office is the norm, all aspects of e-commerce are realized, including time, place, and device shifting of entertainment experience has occurred, interactive multi-media applications and machine to machine communication are commonplace and interactive multimedia entertainment is seen as part of communal experience the adoption of these services and applications have been slow in the U.S. This paper identifies some of the problems associated with the adoption of digital life by end-users in the U.S. Specifically, this paper addresses the following questions: i) Can current information communication technologies effectively address some of the problems in U.S. society? ii) Do end-users view current information technologies as means to address some of the challenges in their everyday life? iii) What are the factors impeding end-user adoption of these technologies such as tele-work and tele-health? iv) What are the key accelerators that would make digital life a reality in the U.S? This paper draws on results of a random sample of over 5,000 respondents in North America, on the role ICT in addressing end-user “paint points and passions.” As initial analyses of the results indicate, tracking end-user “passion” and “painpoints” translates to the share of attention paid on the issues and share of the “end-user” wallet spent on these activities. Also, this paper argues “ease of use” and “uniqueness” of ICT applications and services are key drivers of end-user adoption. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs In 1954, Abram Maslow [1] postulated the existence of hierarchy of 5 levels of needs. As shown in Figure 1, the lowest level of needs reflect the basic physiological needs – food, water, clothing and shelter. In the Maslowian model, individuals strive to satisfy physiological needs first. These are the basic human needs required to sustain life and include food, clothing and shelter. Figure 1 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Only once the physiological needs are satisfied, will safety or security become the predominant need. Safety encompasses the need to be free of fear of physical danger, the need to be free of deprivation of basic physiological needs, and the need for self-preservation. Key aspects of this level of needs are the need for health care protection and economic protection in terms of money, savings and investment [2]. It is also argued that once threshold point is reached, consumption levels remain constant or decrease. Love or belonging is the next level of needs, This need is characterized by belonging to and being accepted by various groups. And once the individual’s safety needs are satisfied then the need for love/belonging becomes dominant. Once the need for love/belonging is satisfied, the individual desires more personal recognition and feels the need for esteem or recognition from others. The satisfaction of the need for esteem produces feelings of self-confidence, prestige, power, and control. The third and fourth levels of needs are thus seen as social needs [3]. Individuals feel useful and also feel that they have some affect on their environment [4]. Finally, once the need for self-esteem is satisfied, self-actualization becomes the dominant need. Self-actualization is defined as the need to maximize one's potential and to become what one is capable of becoming [5]. Maslow further argued that [3][6]: • Individuals must satisfy lower level of needs before higher levels of needs can be addressed. • Sufficient levels of income are necessary to satisfy lower needs. • Once threshold point is attained, consumption levels remain constant or decrease Current U.S. household expenditure patterns tend to support such a priority of needs. As shown in Figure 2, food, housing, health-care and transportation form the bulk of household spending. It is interesting to note that this distribution of household income has been relatively constant over the past 30 years, at least [7]. Figure 2 U.S. Households Average Expenditures Figure 3 U.S. Households Average Expenditures as Percentage of Total 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10