Family caregivers prioritize affordability, flexibility, and caregiver continuity when selecting home-based care services, with preferences varying significantly by caregiver burden and care recipient characteristics. This discrete choice analysis identifies the structural barriers that prevent alignment between what families need and what services actually deliver.
Key Points
- Cost and service flexibility rank as primary decision factors for family caregivers
- Caregiver burden level substantially shifts preferences toward continuity of care
- Supply-demand mismatch reflects caregiver priorities, not service design limitations
Longevity Analysis
The sustainability of aging in place depends on care systems that match what families actually require—not what policymakers assume they should want. When caregivers cannot access affordable, flexible services with consistent personnel, the burden concentrates on unpaid family members, accelerating their own health deterioration and compromising the care recipient's adherence to health-supporting routines. This research directly addresses a structural impediment to longevity: the failure to decode what caregiving systems require before attempting to optimize them. Without this foundational understanding, interventions addressing nutrition, stress response, sleep, and other determinants of healthspan will fail because the infrastructure supporting them has collapsed.
Original published by SAGE Research on Aging, by Qiyan Zeng, Shuyi Jin, Zhipeng He, Weiguang Pan1Research Academy for Rural Revitalization of Zhejiang Province, 12627Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China2College of Economics and Management, 12627Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China3College of Economics and Management, 34752China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.