Information Technology Acceptance: Construct development and empirical validation

Abstract

Traditional adoption models explain the intention to use information technology (IT). These models draw on theories that relate perceptions of IT to its actual use. To advance the IT adoption literature, we direct attention away from individual perceptions of IT towards understanding the drivers of individuals' decisions as they use IT. This approach may offer richer explanations of individual IT-enabled performance. Using five decisions about IT acceptance and the theoretical lens of automaticity as proposed in previous work, we develop the construct of Information Technology Acceptance as being comprised of the five decisions that users make (i.e., to receive, to grasp, to assess, to be given, and to submit) and validate an instrument with data collected from 524 technology users in three organizations. The results support the model, suggesting that the five acceptance decisions are constant across organizational and technological contexts. We conclude with propositions to shape adoption research further using this new construct.