## 7 Discussion
### Theoretical Implications  
This paper was the first to link the digital literacy of the target group to macro-outcomes of innovation diffusion and to draw a direct effect of the proportion of PIRs in the  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Parameters** & **Final Market Penetration** \\ \hline \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) & 0.058 *** \\  & (0.005) \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=30\%\)(bn) & \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=40\%\) & \(-0.043\) *** \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=50\%\) & \((0.001)\) \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=60\%\) & \(-0.084\) *** \\ \(\mathrm{(0.001)}\) \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=70\%\) & \(-0.124\) *** \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=30\%\)* \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) (bn) & \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=40\%\)* \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) & 0.099 *** \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=50\%\)* \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) & 0.007 \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=50\%\)* \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) & 0.044 *** \\ \(\mathrm{(0.006)}\) \\ \(\mathrm{PP}=70\%\)* \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) & 0.054 *** \\ \(\mathrm{(0.006)}\) \\ \(\mathrm{\_cons}\) & 0.418 *** \\ \(\mathrm{(0.000)}\) & \\ \hline Obs. & 10498 \\ R-squared & 0.990 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Note: *** \(p<0.01\) (based on a Student’s t (4999) distribution with two tails); * interactions of two parameters, e.g., \(\mathrm{PP}=30\%\)* \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\) means interactions of \(\mathrm{PP}=30\%\) with \(\mathrm{P_{OL}}\); bn, base number; the numbers in parentheses are standard errors.  
\end{table}
Table 5: Regression results.  
older population on diffusion outcomes, as well as a moderating effect on the effectiveness of various promotional strategies. The research has three contributions.  
First, this study developed an agent-based model to simulate the process of the use of social platforms by the elderly. The innovation diffusion literature focuses on the diffusion of general products or services [39; 40]. The agent-based model constructed by these scholars cannot reflect the impact of the characteristics of social platform and fails to consider various strategies that the managers of social platforms adopt to encourage platform adoption. In addition, previous innovation diffusion studies have failed to mention the behavioral differences that result from individuals' digital literacy. We combined research on the digital literacy of the elderly, the literature on innovation diffusion and empirical research on social platforms to build an agent-based model that is more appropriate for the adoption process of social platforms for the elderly.  
Second, this study suggested that the digital literacy of the elderly who have been connected to the Internet has a direct impact on the market penetration of social platforms. Previous literature on the digital literacy of the elderly is often a statistical study of the manner and frequency of information activities in which the elderly participate [14; 16; 34; 72]. We divided the elderly into PIRs and AISs according to whether they participated in information seeking and investigated the impact of proportions of PIRs on platform adoption, which enriched the research on the digital literacy of the elderly.  
In addition, this study demonstrated that promotional strategies may have varying degrees of impact on platform adoption with different proportions of PIRs. Since research seldom links the effect of promotional strategies with the digital literacy of the target audience, our conclusions provide new insights into promotion campaigns.