Adopting IoT-based solutions for smart homes : the perspective of the Romanian users

IoT (Internet of Things) is a concept that defines a world in which all objects are connected to each other via the Internet. The ability of smart devices to connect, communicate and transfer data has enabled the innovation and development of various solutions for industry, business organizations and final consumers. In this article, we have chosen to discuss the solutions related to smart homes. Thus, our paper presents, in the first part, the conceptual delimitations regarding IoT, areas of application, and characteristics of the solutions dedicated to smart homes, showing that adoption of IoT-based smart home solutions has been too little addressed in the literature. Most of the work in the field insists on the technical aspects and only subsidiarily deals with the issues regarding the level of understanding of the IoT smart home concept by potential or actual users and the degree of adoption and use of these solutions. In order to cover these gaps identified in the literature, we presented, in the second part of the paper, the methodology and results of an exploratory research, conducted on a sample of 471 persons, which allowed us to identify the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents (users of IoT solutions), level of understanding the IoT concept, degree of the adoption and, also, the associated benefits and challenges, from the perspective of the Romanian users. We also developed a binary logistic regression model, for in-depth analysis of the results and for correlating the findings of our research with those of other studies.