Explaining the unexpected and continued use of an information system with the help of evolved evolutionary mechanisms

Abstract

Explaining how, why, and to what extent humans use information systems has been at the heart of the information systems (IS) discipline, and although successful models have emerged, mostly relying on social and cognitive psychology in their theoretical underpinnings, there are still cases that remain unexplainable. In this article, we scrutinize one of these cases where the continued use of technology cannot be explained by one of the most prominent traditional IS models to date. We analyze our qualitative case study by juxtaposing two theoretical lenses: a traditional IS perspective (i.e., the “unified theory of acceptance and use” model) versus an evolutionary psychology perspective (i.e., the four‐drive model). We find that a more comprehensive understanding of continued IS usage is possible when including an evolutionary psychology perspective to the existing models. Specifically, we propose three new concepts, including evolved performance expectancy, evolved effort expectancy, and evolved social influence. We also demonstrate that, in some situations, cognitive and social constructs dominate, whereas in other situations, the evolutionary dependent constructs associated with human nature take over.