Computer systems cannot improve organizational performance if they aren't used. Unfortunately, resistance to end-user systems by managers and professionals is a widespread problem. To better predict, explain, and increase user acceptance, we need to better understand why people accept or reject computers. This research addresses the ability to predict peoples' computer acceptance from a measure of their intentions, and the ability to explain their intentions in terms of their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and related variables. In a longitudinal study of 107 users, intentions to use a specific system, measured after a one-hour introduction to the system, were correlated 0.35 with system use 14 weeks later. The intention-usage correlation was 0.63 at the end of this time period. Perceived usefulness strongly influenced peoples' intentions, explaining more than half of the variance in intentions at the end of 14 weeks. Perceived ease of use had a small but significant effect on intentions as well, although this effect subsided over time. Attitudes only partially mediated the effects of these beliefs on intentions. Subjective norms had no effect on intentions. These results suggest the possibility of simple but powerful models of the determinants of user acceptance, with practical value for evaluating systems and guiding managerial interventions aimed at reducing the problem of underutilized computer technology.

User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models

Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that an understanding of human motivation requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. We discuss the SDT concept of needs as it relates to previous need theories, emphasizing that needs specify the necessary conditions for psychological growth, integrity, and well-being. This concept of needs leads to the hypotheses that different regulatory processes underlying goal pursuits are differentially associated with effective functioning and well-being and also that different goal contents have different relations to the quality of behavior and mental health, specifically because different regulatory processes and different goal contents are associated with differing degrees of need satisfaction. Social contexts and individual differences that support satisfaction of the basic needs facilitate natural growth processes including intrinsically motivated behavior and integration of extrinsic motivations, whereas those that forestall autonomy, competence, or relatedness are associated with poorer motivation, performance, and well-being. We also discuss the relation of the psychological needs to cultural values, evolutionary processes, and other contemporary motivation theories.

/pdf/the-what-and-why-of-goal-pursuits-human-needs-and-the-self-9g2lmfmhmg.pdf

The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior

Relationship marketing—establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges—constitutes a major shift in marketing theory and practice. After conceptualizing relationship marke...

The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing

The present research develops and tests a theoretical extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) that explains perceived usefulness and usage intentions in terms of social influence and cognitive instrumental processes. The extended model, referred to as TAM2, was tested using longitudinal data collected regarding four different systems at four organizations ( N = 156), two involving voluntary usage and two involving mandatory usage. Model constructs were measured at three points in time at each organization: preimplementation, one month postimplementation, and three months postimplementation. The extended model was strongly supported for all four organizations at all three points of measurement, accounting for 40%--60% of the variance in usefulness perceptions and 34%--52% of the variance in usage intentions. Both social influence processes (subjective norm, voluntariness, and image) and cognitive instrumental processes (job relevance, output quality, result demonstrability, and perceived ease of use) significantly influenced user acceptance. These findings advance theory and contribute to the foundation for future research aimed at improving our understanding of user adoption behavior.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2634758.pdf

A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: Four Longitudinal Field Studies

The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one's life pursuits. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one's behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort. Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.

/pdf/social-cognitive-theory-an-agentic-perspective-hguh0k9i9z.pdf

Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective

1 An earlier draft of this paper was written while the author was with the Laboratory of Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health, and was read at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Chicago on August 30, 1956. The experiment reported here was conducted while the author was at Johns Hopkins University as a Public Health Service Research Fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health. Additional financial support was received from the Yale Communication Research Program, which is under the direction of Carl I. Hovland and which is operating under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The author is particularly grateful to James Owings for his help in running the experiment; to Ramon J. Rhine and Janet Baldwin Barclay for their help in analysis of the data; and to Roger K. Williams, Chairman of the Psychology Department at Morgan State College, for the many ways in which he facilitated collection of the data. nication produce public conformity without private acceptance, or did it produce public conformity coupled with private acceptance? (Cf. 1, 4.) Only if we know something about the nature and depth of changes can we make meaningful predictions about the way in which attitude changes will be reflected in subsequent actions and reactions to events.

Compliance, identification, and internalization three processes of attitude change:

A persistent concern in the analysis of public opinion data is the "meaning" that one can ascribe to the observed distributions and trends—and to the positions taken by particular individuals and segments of the population In a certain sense, the need for more detailed information about opinions be met by improvements and refinements in the methodology of opinion assessment But, no matter how refined the techniques, they do not provide direct information about the meaning of the opinions and do not permit automatic predictions to subsequent behavior: the investigator still has to make inferences from the data Social influence has been a central area of concern for experimental social psychology almost since its beginnings It can also be observed, for example, in the context of socialization of children, where the taking over of parental attitudes and actions is a normal, and probably essential, part of personality development

Processes of opinion change

/pdf/crimes-of-obedience-toward-a-social-psychology-of-authority-40mheo7cd3.pdf

Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility

INTERESTING differences often appear between the immediate and the delayed effects of a communication designed to produce opinion change. Apart from the simple forgetting of the content of the communication, which would lead to a reduced effect with time, certain motivational factors also seem to be at work. Observation of ordinary life situations reveals two opposing phenomena. On the one hand, an individual may be exposed to a communication, and accept the communicator's point of view, but after a period of time he may revert to his previous attitude. On the other hand, an individual may at first reject the communicator's point of view, but after a period of time \"come around\" to the communicator's position. This latter phenomenon has been described as the sleeper effect by Hovland, Lumsdaine, and Sheffield (4). A recent experiment by Hovland and Weiss (5) suggests that the sleeper effect may be due to the removal with time of a tendency to discount the material presented by an untrustworthy source. These investigators presented identical communications to their subjects (5s), attributing them to \"trustworthy\" sources with half the 5s and to \"untrustworthy\" sources with the other half. They found that there was initially a pronounced superiority in the amount of change produced by the trustworthy sources, but that with the passage of time the difference tended to disappear. Delayed measurements showed

Reinstatement of the communicator in delayed measurement of opinion change.

This chapter begins with a summary of a model, developed half a century ago, that distinguishes three qualitatively different processes of social influence: compliance, identification, and internalization. The model, originally geared to and experimentally tested in the context of persuasive communication, was subsequently applied to influence in the context of long-term relationships, including psychotherapy, international exchanges, and the socialization of national/ethnic identity. It has been extended to analysis of the relationship of individuals to social systems. Individuals' rule, role, and value orientations to a system--conceptually linked to compliance, identification, and internalization--predict different reactions to their own violations of societal standards, different patterns of personal involvement in the political system, and differences in attitude toward authorities and readiness to obey. In a further extension of the model, three approaches to peacemaking in international or intergroup conflicts are identified--conflict settlement, conflict resolution, and reconciliation--which, respectively, focus on the accommodation of interests, relationships, and identities, and are conducive to changes at the level of compliance, identification, and internalization.

/pdf/interests-relationships-identities-three-central-issues-for-1dom9140dt.pdf

Herbert C. Kelman

Papers

Compliance, identification, and internalization three processes of attitude change:

Processes of opinion change

Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility

Reinstatement of the communicator in delayed measurement of opinion change.

Interests, Relationships, Identities: Three Central Issues for Individuals and Groups in Negotiating Their Social Environment