Why Traditional Technology Acceptance Models Won't Work for Future Information Technologies?

This paper illustrates why existing technology acceptance models are only of limited use for predicting and explaining the adoption of future information and communication technologies. It starts with a general overview over technology adoption processes, and presents several theories for the acceptance as well as adoption of traditional information technologies. This is followed by an overview over the recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies. Based on the arguments elaborated in these sections, it is shown why the factors used to predict adoption in existing systems, will not be sufficient for explaining the adoption of future information and communication technologies. Keywords—Technology Diffusion, Technology Acceptance Models, Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing. I. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS N ORDER to understand the importance of technological acceptance when introducing new technologies, it is important to be aware of the different steps of the diffusion process. Diffusion, in the context of innovation research, usually refers to “the process, by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” [66]. Research related to the diffusion of innovation has a quite long tradition, with first articles being published in the early 1940s (see, e.g., [68]). As new technologies are usually first used for commercial applications, the focus of this section will be on technology adoption in companies. In its easiest form, the diffusion process consists of two stages: adoption and implementation (see Figure 1). The adoption stage includes sub-stages of knowledge acquisition, persuasion and learning, and decision, leading to the actual adoption decision [61]. The process of innovation adoption can happen in different ways, which will be described later in more detail. Fig. 1. Different stages of the innovation diffusion process according to Prescott and Conger [61]. C. Röcker is with the Communication Sciences Department at RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, 52056 Aachen, Germany (phone: +49 241 8025508; fax: +49 241-8022493; e-mail: roecker@humtec.rwthaachen.de). Several factors directly influence the diffusion process. According to Prescott and Conger [61] those factors include the characteristics of the innovation, the social system and the communication channels, which are all interacting over time (see Figure 2). Fig. 2. Factors affecting the innovation diffusion process according to Prescott and Conger [61]. Within organizations, technology adoption mostly occurs in a two-step process (see, e.g., [43] or [45]). In the first step, the decision to adopt the technology is made on management level and is usually referred to as the ‘primary adoption’. The innovation decision is then followed by actual introduction of the technology to the work place, where it has to be adopted by users (secondary adoption). Fig. 3. Process of innovation adoption within organizations [30]. Depending of the adoption decision in the first and second stage, different types of innovation adoption are possible (see Table ). As shown in the lower left cell of the matrix, the primary adoption decision does not guarantee, that the innovation will actually be implemented or used by the targeted users [30]. TABLE I TAXONOMY OF TWO-STAGE INNOVATION ADOPTION TYPES ACCORDING TO GALLIVAN [30] Primary Adoption No Primary Adoption Secondary Adoption Authority-Based Innovation Adoption Bottom-Up Adoption No Secondary Adoption Adoption, but no Deployment Non-Adoption Carsten Röcker Why Traditional Technology Acceptance Models Won't Work for Future Information Technologies? I World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Information and Communication Engineering