{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T05:08:46Z","timestamp":1788930526903,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":53,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1788912000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Public Health"],"abstract":"\n Introduction<\/jats:title>\n The availability of digital care services does not ensure their adoption by older adults.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Methods<\/jats:title>\n This study develops a tripartite evolutionary game involving government, platform enterprises, and older adults to examine how legal governance, enterprise investment, and user-side benefits jointly shape the adoption of smart care services by older adults in China. The payoff structure applies penalties and reputational losses only to passive enterprise investment and makes age-friendly design, data protection, and support measures improve the relative payoff of adoption. Official procurement records, enterprise disclosures, administrative performance data, subsidy standards, and survey estimates provide direct observable anchors, proxy-informed ranges, or scenario bounds according to parameter identifiability.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Results<\/jats:title>\n \n Under a coordinated baseline and an initial utilization share of 0.116, the system reached (0.908, 0.919, 0.965) at\n t<\/jats:italic>\n = 80. A low government-and-enterprise initial state recovered much more slowly but approached the same high-inclusion equilibrium by\n t<\/jats:italic>\n = 300. Across 2,000 seeded draws, the share with all three strategies above 0.9 increased from 1.95% at\n t<\/jats:italic>\n = 80 to 6.1% at\n t<\/jats:italic>\n = 1,000; the high-inclusion corner was locally stable in 6.2% of the drawn parameter sets.\n <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Discussion<\/jats:title>\n These are conditional simulation results, not population probabilities. High inclusion requires the public value of intervention to exceed implementation cost, sanctions and reputation to offset the short-run advantage of underinvestment, and user benefits and support to overcome the outside option.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1912949","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T04:43:03Z","timestamp":1788928983000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Digital inclusion, legal governance, and the adoption of smart care services by older adults in China: an evolutionary game analysis"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Yu","family":"Hu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Law School, Hubei University","place":["Wuhan, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yuqi","family":"Xiao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Law, Guangdong University of Technology","place":["Guangzhou, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xuan","family":"Gao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Law School & Intellectual Property School, Jinan University","place":["Guangzhou, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhengzong","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Marxism, Shenzhen Technology University","place":["Shenzhen, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","unstructured":"Statistical Communiqu\u00e9 of the People's Republic of China on the 2024 National Economic and Social Development\n \n 2025"},{"key":"B2","unstructured":"Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China (2026\u20132030).\n \n 2026"},{"key":"B3","unstructured":"Opinions on Deepening the Reform and Development of Elderly Care Services.\n \n 2025"},{"key":"B4","unstructured":"China\n Economic Net\n \n \n Around 90% of China's older people age at home; the smart elderly-care market was forecast to reach CNY 6.8 trillion in 2024.\n \n 2024"},{"key":"B5","unstructured":"Prospects for smart elderly care are promising\n \n \n \n Kang\n Q\n \n \n Economic Daily\/China Economic Net.\n \n 2025"},{"key":"B6","unstructured":"Yang\n F\n \n \n Older People in the \u201cDigital Divide\u201d: How to Avoid Marginalisation in the Age of AI? People's Tribune Online.\n \n 2025"},{"key":"B7","unstructured":"Watchdog\n Times\n \n \n Social Practice Research on Smart Elderly Care in the \u201cDigital Warmth for Older People, Cloud Protection for Later Life\u201d Project. China.com\n \n 2025"},{"key":"B8","unstructured":"Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China. Adopted 20 August (2021) effective 1 November 2021"},{"key":"B9","unstructured":"Law of the People's Republic of China on the Construction of a Barrier-Free Environment\n \n \n 2023"},{"key":"B10","unstructured":"2018 amendment\n Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Older Persons"},{"key":"B11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e08765","DOI":"10.1016\/j.heliyon.2022.e08765","article-title":"Elderly's intention to use technologies: a systematic literature review","volume":"8","author":"Yap","year":"2022","journal-title":"Heliyon."},{"key":"B12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e65269","DOI":"10.2196\/65269","article-title":"Factors influencing health care technology acceptance in older adults based on the Technology Acceptance Model and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology: meta-analysis","volume":"27","author":"Yang","year":"2025","journal-title":"J Med Internet 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