Understanding diversity - The impact of personality on technology acceptance

Abstract

Technology is becoming increasingly automated, aiming to ease the life of its users. However, besides the advantages of this trend, users are also faced with increasing risks, e.g., regarding their privacy. Examples are seamless online payments that come with the requirement to provide sensitive, e.g., credit card information, or social networks trying to elicit private information for its users. Research on technology acceptance identified two important factors for the individual decision to accept such kinds of risk: trust and personality traits. In this paper we present a model that integrates research findings for personality traits and for trust in the context of technology acceptance. We show that specific personality traits have a distinct direct or moderating effect. We, e.g., found that two personality traits moderate the relationship between perceived ease of use and intention to use. This moderation could explain the inconsistent findings on this relationship in prior research. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.