Technology acceptance in situations with alternative technologies

Abstract

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been widely used to predict user acceptance and use based on perceived usefulness and ease of use. However, the empirical tests of this model have given mixed and inconclusive results. In part, this may be due to the fact that the tests generally have treated every setting in agreement with a one choice situation. That is, a situation where the user have no alternative technologies to choose among. In this paper it is argued for that some situations are multiple-choice situations and that these situations require a particular approach. To address this issue, this paper reports on a study of 1009 white-collar workers in a Norwegian oil company that could choose between several technologies when they communicate with others. The setting provides empirical data for assessing how well TAM explain the usage of the different communication technologies in the setting when the situation is treated as a one choice situation versus a multiple-choice situation. The results demonstrate that TAM explain the usage behavior for 5 out of 7 technologies better when the model is treated in accordance with the real situation, that is, a multiple-choice reality. Although this result has important implications for the study of technology acceptance, future studies will have to explore the potential importance of technology comparisons on several other variables than included in this research. The existence of situations involving alternative technologies could have important implications for the development and test of several of the theoretical models available in the ISfield.

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