Preliminary evidence for the effect of automatic responses to authority on information technology diffusion

Successful diffusion of IT within an organization can depend on IT use decisions by many individuals. Current rational models focusing on cognitive determinants of such IT use decisions explain 30 to 40 percent of organizational members' use behaviors. This article demonstrates, via a laboratory study, that automatic unthinking responses may be significant in explaining user behavior. We find that automatic responses to authority, that are cued by incentives and controls, may explain more than 20 percent of IT use variance, over and above that accounted for by rational decision making. This suggests interesting opportunities for IT diffusion research, exploring automatic IT use responses resulting from authority, as well as other automatic response generators such as reciprocation and consistency.

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