Activating the potential demand of home-based care services for the elderly is an inevitable requirement to improve the utilization efficiency of social endowment resources. Based on an analytical framework according to the theory of planned behavior and AttitudeBehavior-Situation theory, this paper analyzed the influencing factors of the inconsistency between the elderly’s desire and behavior for home care service by logit-ISM model, using the data of China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS) in 2018. The empirical results show that there is an obvious contradiction between the elderly’ s demand willingness and adoption of home-based care services in China, where nearly 30% of the elderly didn’ t convert the demand willingness into actual utilization behavior. The control factors of perceived behavior, situational factors of family, community, and society, as well as preference factors of the elderly can explain the causes of dissnonace. The probability of deviation can be significantly reduced by improving the elderly’s income level and cognition of home-based care services, enhancing family pension resources, increasing community pension service supply and providing home-based care service subsidies, while the weakening of the elderly’s preference for traditional pension mode can significantly increase the probability of deviation. Among them, income, family endowment resources and community home-based care services supply level are the root factors that affect the deviation. The intermediate indirect factors, such as home care subsidies and health status, act on the superficial direct factors, such as the recognition of home-based care service, the preference of traditional pension model, and the utilization rate of community home care service, and ultimately affect the inconsistency between willingness and behavior.
