With ever-increasing technology complexity, there is a need to consider how technology integrates within typical and specific environments. Empirical work with technology acceptance models has to date focused largely on perceived or expected ease-of-use along with the perceived or expected usefulness of the technology. These constructs have been examined extensively via quantitative methods. Other factors have received less attention. There is some evidence, for instance, that technology adoption may depend on how technology contributes to self-efficacy and agency. Less accessible perhaps to standard quantitative instruments, it is time to consider a mixed-methods approach to examine these aspects of technology acceptance. For this exploratory study, we have begun to evaluate a security modeller tool within a healthcare. We asked IT professionals working in hospital environments in Italy and Spain to work with the technology as part of a limited ethnographic study, and to complete a standard ease-of-use questionnaire. Comparing the results, we found that the quantitative measures to be poor predictors of a willingness to explore the affordances presented by the technology. Although limited at this time, we maintain that a more nuanced picture of technology adoption must allow potential adopters to be creative in response to how they believe the technology could be exploited in their environment.
The Technology Acceptance Model and its derivatives position Perceived Ease of Use, sometimes mediated by Perceived Usefulness, as the primary indicator of an intention to adopt. However, an initial study cast doubt on such a causal relationship: poor ease-of-use scores using a standard instrument did not necessarily correspond to poor usefulness comments from users. We follow up in this paper to explore reproducibility and generalizability. Using secondary review of results from testing and validation activities, we find confirmation that the post hoc measurement of Perceived Ease of Use is less important to participants than their concern for task-oriented usefulness. An ambivalent relationship obtains, therefore, between quantitative measures of Perceived Ease of Use and qualitative review of comments on Perceived Usefulness across three sites in Italy, Spain and the UK. Participants seem to prioritize their professional responsibilities and focus on how the technology under test might support them in their role. We therefore offer an explanation based on psychological theories of work and suggest a controlled follow-on study exploring the narrative content of technology acceptance.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.