To identify research opportunities, it is necessary to investigate how mobile devices have been approached for the purpose of explaining adoption and use and to determine how such approaches could be improved. Prior research in the broad field of diffusion and adoption of telecommunication innovations aids in identifying opportunities for this dissertation to advance the current state of research. While from the current work began with broader inquiries into diffusion and adoption research on telecommunication innovations, the main research question lead to focus on existing research within specific literature on the adoption and use of mobile devices. A suitable outcome is therefore an overview of prior research within this field.
Research Methods
The method to identify research opportunities involved two literature studies. The initial literature study produced Article 1 (Tscherning and Damsgaard, 2008) with the purpose of examining aspects that are accentuated or overlooked in the diffusion and adoption process as reported by scholarly work. The literature study included research conducted from 1998-2007 from three conference outlets: the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), and the IFIP International Federation for Information Processing conference on diffusion and adoption (IFIP 8.6). The choice of these three conferences was made to identify recent research within the area of telecommunication diffusion and adoption, as research on the topic has proliferated immensely within the time period chosen. As studies published in journals may be several years old at the time of their publication, conference papers were chosen as the target to obtain more recent research. In retrospect, however, it could have been more convincing to also include the most respected IS journals in the literature study. As noted in Chapter 3: “Mobile Device Adoption and Use”, Landau (2010) found that out of 2001 total articles published in the “basket of eight” journals between 2000 and 2010, only 76 concerned mobile ICT. With the relatively low number of articles published on the diffusion and adoption of telecommunication technologies in
these journals, the argument in Article 1 (Tscherning and Damsgaard, 2008) could have been strengthened by the addition of further publications in the area.
The second literature study, presented in Chapter 3:”Adoption and Use of Mobile Devices”, narrowed the topic of interest to specifically address the adoption and use of mobile devices. This literature study was inclusive in regard to research outlets, which was more straightforward as the area of concern was less expansive. While the first article applies a holistic framework to the literature study, the study in this cover paper focuses on main elements occupying researchers in the IS adoption literature.
Research Findings
The findings of Article 1 (Tscherning and Damsgaard, 2008) helped to focus the main research question on consumer adoption and use of mobile devices and to indicate a theoretical direction.
Table 15: Diffusion and Adoption Research on Telecommunication Innovations, 1998-2007 Type of
Innovation
Compulsory 19% Approach Variance 83%
Voluntary 81% Process 17%
With network effects 17% Interpretative 50%
Without network effects
83% Positivist 50%
Theory Diffusion of
Innovations
11% Adoption Unit Individual 69%
TAM/TRA etc. 20% Group 2%
Other 50% Organization 25%
None 19% Region 2%
Table 15 provides a typology of diffusion and adoption research on telecommunication innovations between 1998 and 2007 in the three selected outlets. Among other things, the literature study shows that several studies apply TAM and related models to this research area, while a very limited amount of studies address relations among people in groups or
organizations or relationships among organizations. Also, as discussed in section 3.4:
“Research Opportunities”, most studies take a variance approach emphasizing correlation explanations but focusing less on “why” and “how” specific factors cause adoption and use of mobile devices. Hence, the research problem of this dissertation was able to focus on consumer adoption and use of mobile devices, taking a qualitative process approach to study the impact of social influences and competing forces. It should be noted there is an inconsistency in the results because of the identification of a dominance of studies taking a variance approach in the selected outlets (83%) as opposed to the equal distribution of interpretative and positivist studies. The reason for this inconsistency is that the variance approach was interpreted to be a point-in-time study, whereas the process approach was interpreted as including studies that investigated diffusion and adoption over time with at least two points in time to be investigated.
The findings of the focused literature study in Chapter 3: “Adoption and Use of Mobile Devices” can be divided into four broad areas: the role of the artifact, the role of user psychographics, the role of usage objectives, and the role of assimilation. While there is an overall agreement that research on the adoption and use of mobile devices is an important area, several research opportunities were identified. First, even though the artifact has gained increased interest since Orlikowski and Iacono’s (2001) call for its emphasis, research in the area is still limited. Second, though many studies apply user psychographics as antecedents to mobile adoption and usage behaviors, only a limited number of studies take social influences into account, and those studies investigating social influences conduct variance-based research using statistical analysis to find strong causal relationships between social influence and mobile adoption, indicating that process-based qualitative research is needed. Third, whereas researchers seem to agree that there is a need for distinguishing between utilitarian and hedonic objectives of mobile devices, they do not seem to agree on which of these objectives has the highest explanatory power and, therefore, some researchers propose a dual-purpose view of mobile devices. This indicates that the conflicting nature of the mobile device should be
investigated further. Finally, only very limited research has been conducted into the assimilation of mobile devices, though it is now widely recognized that IT assimilation gaps often occur, and that long term innovative effects fail to appear. This implies a need for understanding how mobile devices are assimilated.
Research Contribution to sub-question 1
The contribution of Article 1 (Tscherning and Damsgaard, 2008) is an overview of existing research within the diffusion and adoption of telecommunications research presented through a holistic framework. It provides a foundation for scoping the research area of concern. Once the area of concern has been identified, the specific research question can be formulated. The focused literature review of Chapter 3: “Adoption and Use of Mobile Devices” aids in identifying the core theoretical perspectives, social influence and competing forces, used to answer the main research question.