The role of perceived enjoyment and social norm in the adoption of technology with network externalities

Abstract

The emergence of highly interactive media and the increased connectivity among people call for an investigation of usage behaviour of those media. People tend to rely heavily on peer-to-peer interaction influencing the adoption of new media formats that enhance this interactivity. The first explorative phase of this research consists of interviews with experts and focus groups and builds the basis of the proposed framework and measurement model. Then, a Structural Equation Modelling approach is used to assess the relative importance and the strength between different constructs, including perceived enjoyment, social norm, usefulness, ease of use and intention to use. The results indicate that perceived enjoyment and social norm are important antecedents for the adoption of technology with network externalities.

Keywords:

• network externalities
• technology adoption
• mobile services
• enjoyment
• social norms
• Push to Talk

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Astrid Dickinger

About the authors

Astrid Dickinger is Assistant Professor at the Department of New Media Technology at MODUL University Vienna. Previously, she was Assistant Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, where she completed her dissertation. Her research interests are in the areas of service quality, models of consumer behaviour and acceptance of innovations.

Mitra Arami

Mitra Arami received an MSc degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Vienna (TU), and leads projects in the Energy and Telco industry. She received her Ph.D. from TU in 2006. She has published several papers, articles and books, and her research interests are in M-Commerce, Project Management and Diversity.

David Meyer

David Meyer was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1973. He received a diploma in applied computer science from the University of Vienna in 1998 and a Ph.D. from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration in 2003, where he is currently an assistant professor. His research interests currently include management support systems and data mining.