The role of technology in helping citizens to address environmental problems is an important area of investigation. It is on this context that sustainable energy technologies emerge as critical in mitigating climate change issues. While prior research has mainly focused on investigating the antecedents of adoption and use, this study offers a new perspective by exploring the impact of social dimensions-status and sense of belonging-on technology use behavior. Also, it further examines how the technology use impacts a set of humanistic outcomes, reinforcing the need of holistic studies on both antecedents and outcomes of technologies, especially on the human-centered ones. To achieve this, we adopt a mixed-methods approach with developmental purpose to build the research model. Data from four European countries is used to validate the model, revealing that prestige significantly influences technology use, which in turn strongly affects well-being and comfort. These effects are even stronger among users with strong pro-environmental profile, suggesting that promoting other eco-friendly actions can enhance perceptions of the technology's benefits. Finally, a cross-country analysis is performed confirming the robustness of these results, offering a comprehensive perspective on sustainable technology use.
Older workers tend to engage less in innovative IT use, but they are not the homogenous group portrayed in prior cohort studies. This study examines the heterogeneity in older workers' innovative IT use that arises from diverse developmental trajectories in the aging process. Drawing on the Awareness of Age-Related Change (AARC) framework and survey data from older workers, we show that awareness of age-related gains (e.g. gains in accumulated knowledge) and awareness of age-related losses (e.g. losses in cognitive functioning) shape innovative IT use through the mediating role of challenging job crafting. The results also indicate that the awareness of age-related gains exerts a stronger influence than the awareness of age-related losses. By integrating the AARC framework with research on IS slack resources, we further demonstrate that IS slack time and slack technology moderate the indirect effect of awareness of age-related gains and losses on innovative IT use. This study contributes to research on aging at work by demonstrating how age-related self-perceptions and supportive technological work environments jointly shape innovative IT use. Practically, it suggests that organizations should prioritize leveraging older workers' perceived gains rather than mitigating perceived losses, while also providing sufficient slack resources to foster innovative IT use.
