An Extended IT Adoption Model and Two Empirical Studies in Chinese Cultural Contexts

It is often observed in China that the user acceptance of a new information technology starts satisfyingly well when it is strongly promoted or even enforced to be used, but declines sharply after the initial stage is over. Based on an extended model derived from the technology acceptance model (TAM), this paper presents two empirical studies in individual and organizational contexts respectively to analyze such phenomena from a cultural perspective in the context of China. Results from structured equation model (SEM) analyses demonstrated the ability of the model to interpret the IT acceptance behavior of Chinese users either during or after the initial stage. It is inferred that the initial rise of user acceptance is usually driven by mandatory instructions due to the Far Eastern cultural characteristics of Chinese organizations, while the drop in the second period is caused by changes that occur in some of the recognition factors in the model, reflecting the lack of fit between technology and culture. In the two specific cases studied in the paper, the lack of compatibility and facilitating conditions made the user acceptance decline after the initial period when the effects of training and mandatory instructions died away.