Investigating the factors affecting the internet of things (IOT) adoption model -an exploratory study in Egypt

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the factors that affect developing countries especially Egyptian users to adopt IOT Applications/devices, and to what extent those variables affect the overall attitude towards, behavioral intentions and actual usage of IOT applications/devices. Moreover, to develop an extended adoption model by integrating the security concern and privacy concern in UTAUT2 model. Design/Methodology: a descriptive quantitative approach was adopted, and a comprehensive research model was adapted from literature and then tested via an online questionnaire. Results/Findings: The findings revealed that Effort Expectancy, Facilitating Conditions and Security Concern all have a significant positive effect on the overall intention towards using IOT applications/devices in Egypt. Theoretical and practical implications: The Internet of Things (IOT) has emerged as an innovative computing technology destined to optimize business operations and create new products and services. IOT enable the devices to communicate and integrate with one another to collect, exchange, and make data accessible through the Internet. It is projected that by 2025, over 50 billion devices will be connected to the IOT network, reaching a market value of up to $11 trillion. This study adapted the Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) as the theoretical framework and its findings contribute to the literature by adding security and privacy concerns as new predictor variables. This contributes theoretically to the current literature by providing meaningful insights into the main factors that affect using IOT Applications/Devices in developing countries specially Egypt. This study’s conceptual effort provided an overall overview of how IOT users arrive at choosing (or not choosing) to use IOT applications/devices. Additionally, the analytic effort of this study provided a holistic assessment of the role of each variable. One critical question in this case is whether industrial leaders should assign an equal number of resources to each variable or not. By assessing the significance of each variable, the researcher attempted to clarify the comparative importance of each variable in forecasting purchase intentions and decisions to use IOT applications/devices.