An Empirical Study of the Inhibitors of Technology Usage

Information systems research has focused extensively on the factors that foster adoption and usage. This research has focused on overall beliefs about system usage, antecedents of system satisfaction, and other factors that facilitate system success, create positive attitudes, and encourage usage. However, little attention has been given to what inhibits usage. The inhibitors of usage are implicitly assumed to be the opposite of the facilitators. The position taken in this paper is that usage inhibitors deserve their own independent investigation and are proposed to exist and act uniquely apart from the extensive set of positively oriented beliefs well established in the information systems literature. A theory that proposes inhibitors as beliefs about an information system that uniquely discourage technology use both directly as well as by negatively influencing other beliefs about the system is developed and tested. To test the theory, an empirical field study involving 387 participants in a scenario-based exercise involving a variety of actual e-Business Websites was conducted. The results support that usage inhibitors are qualitatively different from established system attributes and that they act uniquely to negatively bias these beliefs. The theory and results add to our understanding of IS design and functionality and why users may choose not to use a system

Inhibitors and Enablers as Dual Factor Concepts in Technology Usage

Information systems (IS) research has focused extensively on the factors that foster adoption and usage. A large body of work explores overall beliefs about system usage, antecedents of system satisfaction, and other perceptions that enable system success, create positive attitudes, and encourage usage. However, much less attention has been given to what perceptions uniquely inhibit usage. In large part, this is due to the implicit assumption that the inhibitors of usage are merely the opposite of the enablers. This paper proposes a theory for the existence, nature, and effects of system attribute perceptions that lead solely to discourage use. I posit that usage inhibitors deserve an independent investigation on the basis of three key arguments. One, there exist perceptions that serve solely to discourage usage, and these are qualitatively different from the opposite of the perceptions that encourage usage. Two, these inhibiting and enabling perceptions are independent of one another and can coexist. Three, inhibiting and enabling perceptions have differing antecedent and consequent effects.. As unique beliefs, inhibiting perceptions can add to our understanding of the antecedents of usage or outright rejection. Further, such inhibitors may not only be important to the IS usage decision, they may be more important than enabling beliefs

Toward Deep Understanding of Persuasive Product Recommendation Agents

Product recommendation agents (PRA) are systems built to facilitate customers’ products purchase on e-commerce websites. Prior literature focuses on the “shaping” effects of PRA to customers’ decision making. More challengingly, PRA can be built to change customers’ product choice by combining with persuasive features. This paper explores this new type of PRA “persuasive product recommendation agents” (PPRA). In this paper, we make a distinction of PPRA with neutral and deceptive ones. The basic functioning principle of PPRA is stated and a classification of persuasive tactics is made. We propose the mechanism via which PPRA work by incorporating elaboration likelihood model, 4w and theory of reasoned action together. Despite marketing usage, the proposed PPRA can be used to benefit society by promoting green purchases or encouraging charity. The theory also has the generalizability to be used in decision making contexts like healthcare and education. Discussion and future research directions are made

A Profile of Rejecters of Electronic Medical Record Technology

The adoption of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) technology is one of the most significant challenges facing physicians today. Previous studies have investigated the demographic and personality characteristics that drive an individual to be an early adopter of an innovation. However, what if these demographic and personality characteristics were present and there remained a rejecter class of individuals? What if a rejecter fit the demographic and personality profile of a typical adopter, yet did not adopt the technology? Based upon interviews with 20 rejecter physicians, analyzed using thematic analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, and chi-square differences, we present profiles of three types of physicians that are rejecting EMR technology

Measuring the eCommerce Customer Service Lifecycle

This paper describes the preliminary conceptual development of an instrument to measure the ability of an e-commerce site to meet the service aspects of the Customer Service Life Cycle (CSLC) through the use of information technology (IT). In light of the emergence of e-commerce, there is a pressing need for the evaluation of IT-supported services from a customer service perspective. The CSLC purports to be a source of competitive advantage through the differentiation of service offerings (Ives and Learmonth 1984). The CSLC framework can also serve as a basis for the strategic development of interorganizational IT applications. While the CSLC has been discussed in the information systems literature since 1984, little empirical work has been done to develop measures of its constructs of interes

Looking Beyond Adoption to Understanding the User-IT Artifact Relationship

Recent papers have debated whether there are any additional insights still to be gained from traditional information systems (IS) adoption models. Independently, recent research has paid attention to the “usage” construct and offered taxonomies of IS use. In this paper, we offer an overview of a theoretical model that offers researchers the ability to study individual users’ interaction with information technology (IT) artifacts, as well repeated interactions overtime. The proposed interaction-centric model highlights how the characteristics of an IT artifact, together with the user’s internal system and other structuring factors, affect users’ choices in terms of how to utilize the artifact. This subsequently, affects the types of beliefs users form about the artifact as well as their evaluations of it. Furthermore, we introduce a new set of constructs that capture users’ overall perceptions of the artifact and the relationship with it. To facilitate the study of this dynamic relationship that develops between the user and the artifact, we further explicate the effects of evaluations of the artifact from past interaction, and evaluations of the relationship with it, on how users choose to utilize the artifact in future interactions

The Role of Heuristics in Information Security Decision Making

Inadvertent human errors (e.g., clicking on phishing emails or falling for a spoofed website) have been the primary cause of security breaches in recent years. To understand the root cause of these errors and examine practical solutions for users to overcome them, we applied the theory of bounded rationality and explored the role of heuristics (i.e., short mental processes) in security decision making. Interviews with 27 participants revealed that users rely on various heuristics to simplify their decision making in the information security context. Specifically, users rely on experts’ comments (i.e., expertise heuristic), information at hand, such as recent events (i.e., availability heuristic), and security-representative visual cues (i.e., representativeness heuristic). Findings also showed the use of other heuristics, including affect, brand, and anchoring, to a lesser degree. The results have practical and theoretical significance. In particular, they extend the literature by integrating bounded rationality concepts and elaborating “how” users simplify their security decision making by relying on cognitive heuristics

The Effects of Service and Consumer Product Knowledge on Online Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is a key driver of financial performance for online firms. The effect of service quality on customer loyalty has been well established. Yet, there is a paucity of research that has studied the cost of obtaining service quality during the service process and the service outcome influenced by such cost. We extend previous research and propose the 3S Customer Loyalty Model by integrating sacrifice and service outcome as additional important service dimensions together with service quality when predicting online customer loyalty, and examining how their influences on loyalty vary across customers with different degrees of product knowledge. Further, we theorize that service quality and sacrifice -- as service process dimensions -- influence service outcome, and we theorize how “live help” technology improves customer perceptions of service quality and sacrifice. The empirical results indicate that 1) customer loyalty increases with higher perceived service quality, lower perceived sacrifice, and better perceived service outcome, 2) service quality and sacrifice influence service outcome, 3) customer product knowledge negatively moderates the relationship between service quality and online customer loyalty and positively moderates the relationship between sacrifice and customer loyalty, and 4) live help technology enhances service quality and reduces sacrifice. These findings support the theoretical importance of including sacrifice and service outcome (parallel with service quality) as antecedents of online customer loyalty. Our study also advances the theoretical understanding of what service process consists of and how the service process (i.e. service quality and sacrifice) influences service outcome