Acceptance
People are holding different attitudes towards the explosive development of information technology. Nowadays, the information technology is widely used in our modern life, but it doesn’t mean that, the information technology is also widely accepted among the users. User acceptance can be considered as the demonstrable willingness within a user group to employ information technology for the tasks it is designed to support.
According to Rogers (1995) innovation diffusion theory, there are 5 key characteristics of a technology which determine its acceptance of users: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.
1. Here the relative advantage means the extent to which information technology can offer improvements over available tools. The more improvements the information technology can offer to the users, the easier for them to accept the technology. If an IT application is with relative advantages and has a wider extent of improvements, there will be no doubt that it will be more popular and wider accepted by the users.
2. The compatibility here means the consistency of information technology with social practices and norms among its users. The compatibility with existing practices and beliefs makes the information technology application much easier be accepted by the users. It is more convenient and safer for the users to use an IT application with compatibility with existing practices and beliefs.
3. Complexity here can be considered as how difficult it is for the uses to use or learn the IT application. It is obviously that the users prefer the IT application with low complexity. It is very important for the users whether the information technology application is easy for them to use or handle. No one will prefer to accept a more complex IT application.
4. The trialability means the opportunity to try an information technology application or an IT innovation before committing to use it. These opportunities provide the users time to get use of the IT application or the IT innovation. During the trial, the users can find out the advantages and the disadvantages of the IT application or IT innovation, and then they can make decision whether to use it. Nowadays there are more and more information technology companies which provide the trial opportunities to the users.
5. The observability here can be defined as the extent to which the technology’s gains are clear to see. For the users, an information technology application with fine observability might be much more acceptable. The users may clear see the benefits or risks from the information technology with fine observability.
Additionally, usability is another characteristic of information technology which may have influence to the acceptance. Usability is always linked to the qualities of the information technology. Information technology with great usability emphasis on how can make the users operate a technology effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily.
In general, the information technology applications or IT innovation which affords relative advantages, compatibility with existing practices and beliefs, low complexity, potential trialability, and observability, will be more extensively and rapidly accepted than an IT application or innovation with the opposite characteristics. In particular, three of these characteristics seem to have the greatest influence in the acceptance of information technology: relative advantage, compatibility, and lack of complexity. For a brief summing-up, an acceptable information technology is one that appropriately satisfies the requirements of its users for utility, usability, and cost.
Enjing Zhan.
