Individual differences and usage behavior

Abstract

A critical assumption of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is that its belief constructs - perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) - fully mediate the influence of external variables on IT usage behavior. If this assumption is true, researchers can effectively "assume away" the effects of broad categories of external variables, those relating to the specific task, the technology, and user differences. One recent study did indeed find that belief constructs fully mediated individual differences, and its authors suggest that further studies with similar results could pave the way for simpler acceptance models that ignore such differences. To test the validity of these authors' results, we conducted a similar study to determine the effect of staff seniority, age, and education level on usage behavior. Our study involved 106 professional and administrative staff in the IT division of a large manufacturing company who voluntarily use email and word processing. We found that these individual user differences have significant direct effects on both the frequency and volume of usage. These effects are beyond the indirect effects as mediated through the TAM belief constructs. Thus, rather than corroborating the recent study, our findings underscore the importance of users' individual differences and suggest that TAM's belief constructs are accurate but incomplete predictors of usage behavior.