Perceived input control on online platforms from the application developer perspective: conceptualisation and scale development

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, applications of third-party developers have become the cornerstone of platform ecosystems’ success and sustainability. Given their importance, the procedures used on platforms to screen and sort out developers and their applications are crucial in regulating platform openness. Although Information Systems (IS) research has paid considerable attention to traditional control modes, there is still a lack of research on input control and how it is conceptualised and measured from the application developer perspective. We conceptualise perceived input control (PIC) as a second-order construct and empirically refine it over several rounds of validation concluding with a web-based survey of mobile application developers (N=100). Our measurement instrument not only captures application developers’ overall perceptions of input control across different platform contexts but also breaks these perceptions down into distinct lower-level input control factors. Furthermore, we demonstrate PIC’s nomological validity and predictive power in the context of IS continuance research.

KEYWORDS:

• Input control
• scale development
• digital platforms
• continuance intention
• platform openness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The survey also included items for Satisfaction and Perceived Usefulness. Since our substantial findings remained unaffected by entering these constructs in the nomological network, we excluded them from our main analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under grant number: BE 4308/3-1.