Designing Sustainable Digital Platforms for Ageing Societies: A User-Centred Multi-Level Theoretical Framework

With the intensification of population ageing and the increasingly diverse service needs of older adults, existing digital elderly care platforms generally exhibit fragmentation in functional integration, understanding of needs, and service coordination, making it difficult to effectively respond to the complex challenges faced by urban ageing populations. To fill this gap, this study starts from a service design perspective and adopts Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) to construct a theoretical model, proposing a three-tier framework that encompasses seven core user needs, four platform response mechanisms, and three categories of service outcomes. A questionnaire survey was subsequently conducted in the Pearl River Delta region of China, collecting 352 responses, of which 322 were valid. Through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis, the structural stability and predictive validity of the proposed “User Needs-Platform Mechanisms-Service Outcomes” (UN-PM-SO) model were verified. The research results confirm that the theoretical model constructed in this study has good logical consistency and empirical support. Based on this model, a series of concrete design framework recommendations are further proposed, aiming to guide the sustainable and inclusive development of future smart elderly care platforms. The findings of this study not only respond to the urgent global demand for age-friendly digital infrastructure but also demonstrate the sustainable value of smart elderly care platform design in terms of social inclusion, resource efficiency, and environmental friendliness, providing a feasible and theory-based design logic and governance pathway for promoting social sustainability.