Building technology trust in ICT application at a university

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to point out the importance of technology trust and relationships between technology trust and trust antecedents. The paper aims to seek answers to the following questions: what determines technology trust (technology trust antecedents) and how to measure it in the case of the University Student Service System (USSS) technology?Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the survey method was used to collect data. The online survey engaged 413 students representing one Polish technical university. The USSS was the technology of interest. The USSS web is an IT system for managing the course of higher education. The USSS web evolved into a multipurpose platform, which is used by university students for many different purposes.FindingsPositive verification of three accepted hypotheses H1, H3 and H5 shows that the ease of use, general trust level of respondents and institutional trust have a statistically significant influence on USSS technology trust. The diversification of regression coefficients indicates that the ease of use determines USSS technology trust more than general trust and institutional trust.Research limitations/implicationsAn important limitation of the conducted study was the reduction of the sample group of students representing one university – the Bialystok University of Technology. The relationships between variables, however, have made it possible to explain the reasons for the existing dependencies from the perspective of a single university, which constitutes an important cognitive value in the context of motivating and disseminating information and communication technology solutions. A good adjustment of the developed theoretical model indicates that it can be used to a wider degree.Practical implicationsFrom the practical point of view, achieved results showed that there are many factors that can be influenced by managers within an organisation to build up technology trust relations. Institutional trust is one example of such factors. Also, considering that building trust is a process, managers should take into account that different factors can affect technology trust in different stages of this process. At the beginning phase, the ease of use of a particular technology seems to be most important for its users, and then the usefulness of the technology becomes the factor which determines the technology trust. Despite the fact that the conducted research did not show statistically significant relations between technology trust and the intention of future system use, results explained main factors affecting such situations. Also, the frequency of system use seemed to be the most important variable that determines the intention of future system use.Originality/valueThe scientific value of the study is an attempt to build a measurement scales relating to trust in technology and constructs determining that trust. According to a very popular technology acceptance model, which explains the behaviour of technology users, the author expanded the acceptance model and finally proposed the model consisting of five input variables (the ease of use, usefulness, institutional trust, general trust, trust in technology and science) and one output variable – the intention to use the system in the future. The novelty of the research results from the fact that it was the first research conducted in Poland on the topic of technology trust topic.