Factors affecting user tolerance for voice mail message transmission delays

This article addresses nontechnology factors influencing the acceptance of system performance in an electronic voice messaging (“voice mail”) system. Over 1,000 state government and university employees in a midwestern U.S. state responded to a survey evaluating voice mail systems previously installed in employees’ phone systems. Situational constraints of message urgency, message content, and sender‐receiver distance were examined. These constraints, as well as two measures of user experience, were studied to determine relationships between task or situational factors and user acceptance (tolerance) for message transmission delay. Results of the study demonstrated significant main effects of all three situation factors, as well as two situation interaction effects, on delay tolerance. User experience as measured by frequency of use, but not length of system availability, was also significantly related to tolerance for message transmission delay. This article discusses these results in the context of user...