Determinants of smartphones adoption and use at Kenya Airport Police Unit, Kenya

Abstract

The Kenya Airport Police Unit has started using smartphones to deter crime, but there are still reservations about their potential impact on policing. The study sought to identify the factors that influence police officers' adoption and use of smart phone applications for crime prevention. The police officers assigned to the Kenya Airport Police Unit (1382) were the study's target group. For this study, a sample of 274 police officers was selected using a simple random sampling approach. The study was guided by the Mobile Technology Acceptance Model (M-TAM), which discovered that smartphones were useful instruments for crime prevention. Police officers discovered that programs such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, emails, and short text messages helped to prevent crime. The study suggests that tailored police smart phone applications be developed, as well as officer capacity training, to improve their utilization and help to crime prevention efforts.