Deciding to change: An event sequence analysis of consumer adoption behavior

Abstract

A qualitative empirical study explores the behavioral decision process by which transportation consumers adopt alternatives to single occupancy vehicles. The study's findings give rise to a theoretical framework that explains consumer adoption behavior in terms of interplay between three conscious, cognitively distinct processes: selecting is the process of choosing a technology in response to an immediate need; evaluating is the process of forming beliefs about a technology; maintaining is the process of determining the functional status of a technology. Selecting is a relatively simple process, but it requires the decision maker to maintain a train of thought; interrupting the selecting process requires it to be restarted from the beginning. Evaluating and maintaining constitute event-driven behavior that may be interrupted any number of times without disruption. The primary contribution of the paper is a theory of technology adoption that is solidly grounded in empirical observations and prior literature. It is the first theory to explain some of the inner mental decision processes associated with adoption, and it lays the foundation for a more comprehensive causal theory of the consumer technology adoption process.

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