A Preliminary Qualitative Study towards the Development of an Adoption Model

Abstract

Background: Almost all people in the societies are facing new e-Services everyday and it is essential for the implementers to have enough users for the new implemented service. An e-Service without users would be a failure. Therefore, before implementing the e-Services the adoption factors of the users must be considered. The problem is lack of an adoption model with the proper factors for all environments. Moreover, behaviour of the users changes over time and sometime even the impacting factors on the adoption will change too. Aims: This study is developing and proposing an adoption model for the e-Services in an academic environment. Study Design: Interviews with the Information Technology managers were done to find the important factors influencing the adoption of users. Place and Duration of Study: Islamic Azad University - Dehaghan Branch. Between December 2013 and January 2014. Methodology: Three Information Technology managers involving Information Services development were interviewed. First, factors influencing the adoption of users were introduced to them. They were free to add additional factors. The results were used to propose the final adoption model of the study. Results: After gathering data from the interviewees, an adoption model is proposed with one dependent and four independent variables. This model will later be developed based on a quantitative method of factor analysis. "Perceived Ease of Use", "Perceived Usefulness", "Observability", and "Compatibility" were the four independent factors. The dependent factor is 'Intention to Use". Conclusion: While this study is the pilot of a larger scale study, the model must be tested and the relation between the variables must be measured by a quantitative method.