A Novel Romance: The Technology Acceptance Model with Emotional Attachment

Abstract

E-readers, or devices designed primarily for reading e-books, are taking the world by storm. Several papers in library studies and education have examined e-book consumption for academic reading. However, no previous marketing study has investigated consumers’ adoption of e-readers for pleasure reading. We address this gap by testing an extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with emotional attachment (TAME) in this context. Consumers’ attachment to paper books is proposed as a barrier to their adoption of e-readers. This speaks to a key deficiency of the TAM, being its focus on cognition at the expense of consumer emotion. A three-phase study finds support for the TAME, with 64% of the variance explained in consumers’ intentions to adopt e-readers. Emotional attachment to paper books is found to be weakly and negatively associated with consumers’ attitude toward using e-readers. The qualitative findings suggest that e-reader adoption may not involve a binary choice between paper and e-formats.

Emotional Attachment, Performance, and Viability in Teams Collaborating with Embodied Physical Action (EPA) Robots

“…Research on the individual use of technology has identified a link between emotional attachment to a technology and enjoyment derived from using that technology (Read, Robertson, & McQuilken, 2011). This is in part because when someone is emotionally attached to a technology, that person is much more likely to enjoy employing that technology (Roto & Rautava, 2008).…”

Smartphone Adoption amongst Chinese Youth during Leisure-based Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities

“…While the emotional attachment created through individuals forming bonds with their smartphones (an inanimate object) was found to be an important factor, further research 445 should be carried out to extend the original TAM, given its focus on cognition at the expense of consumer emotion (Read, Robertson, & McQuilken, 2011). In particular, there needs to be a further analysis of moderating variables (gender, previous ICT experience) and an exploration of the importance of facilitating conditions (the degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support the use of smartphones).…”

Examining social influence factors affecting consumer continuous usage intention for mobile social networking applications

“…Group norms were measured using the 2-item scale developed by Zhou (2011). Finally, we modified four items from Read, Robertson and McQuilken (2011) to measure continued usage intention. All items were measured using a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = strongly disagree, to 7 = strongly agree).…”