The Relative Importance of Perceived Ease of Use in IS Adoption: A Study of E-Commerce Adoption

Abstract

The technology acceptance model (Davis 1989) is one of the most widely used models of IT adoption. According to TAM, IT adoption is influenced by two perceptions: usefulness and ease-of-use. Research has shown that perceived usefulness (PU) affects intended adoption of IT, but has mostly failed to do so regarding perceived ease of use (PEOU). The basic proposition of this study is that this varying importance of PEOU may be related to the nature of the task. PEOU relates to assessments of the intrinsic characteristics of IT, such as the ease of use, a free simulation experiment support these hypotheses. Implications for future Web development and theoretical refinements are discussed.