Getting Heads into the Cloud: Pre-Adoption Beliefs and Attitudes

This paper reports on the first phase of a 2-phase confirmation-disconfirmation study in which we conduct a pre-implementation survey of employees at a mid-sized university who are about to have their desktop computers replaced with cloud based systems. Specifically, we are interested in their pre-adoption attitudes toward the system and use intentions. We test a model that predicts pre-adoption attitudes based on individual characteristics including computer selfefficacy and perceptions of the IT department that will be implementing the cloud system (perceptions of trust and service quality). We find that perceptions of the IT department influence pre-adoption perceptions of control over the system, which influences perceived usefulness and pre-adoption use intentions. Findings are highlighted in terms of implications for research and practice, in particular, we stress the importance of the ability of IT departments to manage user’s perceptions of trust and service quality to the success of IT initiatives. INTRODUCTION Individual level attitudes and beliefs about information systems are influenced by a variety of factors, including perceptions of control (Jasperson, Butler, Carte, Croes, Saunders, & Zhang et al., 2002), service quality (Delone & McLean, 1993; Tan, Benbasat, & Cenfetelli, 2013), computer efficacy (Keith, Babb, Furner, & Abdullat, 2011) , social interactions (Furner, Racherla, & Zhu, 2012) and perceived utility (Keith, Babb, Furner, & Abdullat, 2010). In addition, attitudes are dynamic, changing as the user accumulates more experience with the system (Brown, Venkatesh, & Goyal, 2012). In particular, Bhattacherjee and Premkumar (2004) note that as users continue to use a system, they experience changes in satisfaction with the system and confirmation or disconfirmation of expectations about the system, which results in modified beliefs, attitudes and usage intentions. The implication is that understanding user attitudes and beliefs about a system is best accomplished with longitudinal research. Longitudinal approaches are relatively rare among attitudinal information system studies, which is surprising given the dynamic nature of beliefs and attitudes about information systems, and the importance of these attitudes to information systems usage outcomes. When a new system is introduced that is substantially different from the traditional system, users’ pre-adoption attitudes and beliefs about the system, its utility and ease of use are formed based on limited information and no experience (Brown et al., 2012). In these situations, users will form their attitudes and beliefs based on information provided to them by the system’s provider, social interactions and their computer efficacy. These pre-adoption beliefs and attitudes are important as they are expected to influence expectations about the system, which will interact with their actual experience with the system to flavor post-adoption attitudes and continued usage intentions. Bhattacherjee & Prekumar (2004) argue that individual characteristics have the initial impact on Journal of International Technology and Information Management Volume 22, Number 3 2013 © International Information Management Association, Inc. 2013 2 ISSN: 1543-5962-Printed Copy ISSN: 1941-6679-On-line Copy pre-adoption attitudes, which shape use intentions. There are a number of individual characteristics and pre-adoption attitudes that may come into play, and in order to create actionable guidelines for system designers, researchers are tasked with identifying and investigating these factors (Petter, Delone, & McLean, 2013; Wu & Chen, 2005). As part of a larger effort to understand the factors and dynamics that influence attitudes and intentions, the current study examines individual level characteristics that influence pre-adoption attitudes and intentions regarding a real cloud based computer system that will replace a desktop based system at a mid-sized University in the Southwest United States. The cloud computing context is becoming increasingly relevant to practitioners as well as IS researchers, particularly in the study of adoption (Cegielski, Jones-Farmer, Wu, & Zhazen, 2012; Loebbeck, Thomas, & Ullrich, 2012). The current study contributes to research on individual differences in IS attitude formation (i.e.Agarwal & Prasad, 1999; Alwahaishi & Snasel, 2013) while employing a sample of real, working users for whom adoption is mandatory in a context relevant to researchers and practitioners alike. The primary research questions are as follows: 1. What individual level factors influence pre-adoption attitudes? 2. How do pre-adoption attitudes influence usage intentions? The results reported in this manuscript are part of a longitudinal study that seeks to model the influence of pre-adoption attitudes, experience with the system, disconfirmation and satisfaction on post adoption beliefs, attitudes and usage intentions. Information systems researchers have sought to identify the factors that make information systems successful for decades (e.g. Swanson, 1974). Indeed defining information system success has been a challenge itself. Researchers generally agree that information systems use is an excellent proxy for success, and have been operating under this paradigm for decades (Hartwick & Barki, 1994). Roby (1979) developed a model that linked system characteristics and individual characteristics to information systems use. Using sales people as a sample, he demonstrated that a number of individual level factors, including job performance, tendency to communicate with team members and perceived urgency influenced an individual’s likelihood to use a system. Since 1989, the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) has been the dominant framework for explaining individual differences in information systems use (Bagozzi, 2007). While the model, which is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, is simple: individual’s perceptions of ease of use and usefulness will influence their use, it has served as a foundation for numerous subsequent studies. Many such studies added system level antecedents to explain perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, while others looked at individual level determinants. Until recently, studies built on this framework assumed that individual level determinants of use intention were static. Bhattacherjee & Premkumar (2004) proposed a two stage model which accounted for individual level attitudes and intentions about a system in the pre-use stage, and modified attitudes and intentions in a post-implementation stage. Following Bhattacherjee & Premkumar (2004) and Brown et al. (2012), we develop a 2-stage model of cloud use intention based on trust, computer efficacy and perceived service quality. In the current paper, we report on the first step in our longitudinal study, where we demonstrate a relationship between Getting Heads into the Cloud: Pre-Adoption Beliefs and Attitudes C. P. Furner © International Information Management Association, Inc. 2013 3 ISSN: 1543-5962-Printed Copy ISSN: 1941-6679-On-line Copy individual characteristics, system perceptions and use intentions. This paper proceeds as follows. In the following section, we review relevant literature and develop our research model. Next, we outline our methodology and present our findings. These findings are then discussed in terms of implications for current research and practice. Summarizing remarks conclude the paper.