Personality Types as Moderators of the Acceptance of Information Technologies in Organizations: A Multi-Group Analysis in PLS-SEM

Abstract

This study aims to examine the influence of personality types on the acceptance of information technologies at work. Based on the model of the five dominant personality traits and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, 155 users of Enterprise Resource Planning systems were examined in two Chilean organizations. A cluster analysis applied to personality traits identified three different types of personalities. Subsequently, a multi-group analysis in Partial Least Squares of the technology acceptance model detected statistically significant differences among these types of personalities. Specifically, although for all personality types, the intention to use technology is explained in more than 60 percent, the strength of the antecedent variables changes radically depending on the type of personality. These findings indicate that personality type plays an essential role as a moderator of technology acceptance at work. This study is one of the first attempts where personality types, instead of specific personality traits, have been associated with technology acceptance models. In it, we performed an analysis of statistically significant differences among the types. Its practical implications are to identify the personality type of employees and adapt the implementation of innovations accordingly. This can help organizations to implement technology successfully, which, in turn, contributes to their sustainability.

How the Type of Job Position Influences Technology Acceptance: A Study of Employees’ Intention to Use Mobile Technologies for Knowledge Transfer

“…Supported hypotheses H4, H6, H7, H11 and H14 ( Table 7 and Table 8) as well as H15, H16 and H20 (Table 9) proving that connections between RU->BI, SI->BI, EE->PE, UA->EE, RU->FC, EEt->BI, FCt->BI and SIt->BI are moderated by TJP, confirm the first main hypothesis-the type of job position affects the strength of factor's influence on mobile technology acceptance for knowledge transfer. This is convergent with other studies confirming that depending on the type of technology user -expressed by moderators such as: adopter/non-adopter [61], occupation [74], personal interactivity [76], professionals/novices [78], and personality type [77] -the strength of particular determinants on the intention to use technology might vary significantly. The results presented in Table 8 highlight that there are connections that exist only for particular job types:…”

“…Divergent verification results for occupation and employment moderators, highlight that there should exist moderator that would help to explain whether type of professional work impacts on technology acceptance, especially as other related studies exist (Table 1). Wang et al [81] recognized that there are significant differences between social users and silent users, like employees, regarding the influence of computer self-efficacy on perceived security, the perceived ease of use and perceived security on behavioral intentions Such a research result is strengthen in the study of Ramírez-Correa et al [77] which confirmed that personality types moderate intention to use technology. Moreover personal interactivity was positively verified to impact technology acceptance, where the same factors appeared to be more important for high-interactivity users than low-interactivity [76].…”

“…The impact of performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and effort expectancy on technology acceptance was acknowledged to depend on culture. Conducting studies in many countries significantly differing from each other from a culture perspective, such as: Australia [67], Chile [77], China [60], Guyana [31], India [61], Qatar [58], Malaysia [62], Saudi Arabia [57], South Korea [59], [76] and United States [57], [60], [62] led to the recognition of culture as a moderator that should be included in models for general technology acceptance. Similarly, education and income moderators have been validated in more than one study where education was positively verified in [68], [69] and income turned out not to moderate the intention to use technologies [68], [69], [71].…”

“…The vast majority of moderators were proposed and verified in individual studies often in the context of specific technologies, such as: e-government services [70], enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems [77], enterprise 2.0 applications [81], CV database system [61], prepayment metering systems [66], mobile accounting courses [73], online lecture website in the context of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) [76] and tax preparation software [78]. One study concerned particular tool as Facebook [68].…”

Predicting and Explaining the Acceptance of Social Video Platforms for Learning: The Case of Brazilian YouTube Users

“…Therefore, we believe that it is necessary to continue in this line of work to increase this percentage. Among the new proposals to explore the adoption of information technologies, the moderation effects associated with personality types be obvious as an alternative, since there is evidence of their effect between performance expectancy and intention to use information technology [58].…”