The Effect of Culture on User Acceptance of Information Technology

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The UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology), a unified model of the acceptance of technology by workers in the United States, explains individual acceptance and usage decisions of a technology in organizations (R2 up to 70 percent); its usefulness, however, has not been tested in settings outside the U.S. Other models of technology use, such as the Technology Acceptance Model, have been predictive within the U.S., but have been found to be less predictive when tested in countries outside the U.S., such as Switzerland, Japan, Arabic countries, and Hong Kong, suggesting that culture may play a significant role in Information Technology (IT) usage and adoption. No clear relationships, however, have been established between cultural variables and IT adoption factors. The UTAUT model includes social influence as a factor that explains some of the variance in users' acceptance of technology. One dimension of the social influence factor is culture. This study examines the effect of culture through the social influence variable of the UTAUT model on user acceptance of Prepayment Metering Systems - an Information Technology-based innovation in India. The findings indicate that social influence, along with performance expectancy and effort expectancy (R2 = 72 percent), is a significant factor influencing consumers' intention to use the Prepayment Metering Systems. Social influence represents societal pressure on users to engage in a certain behavior. This social pressure for an individual to perform a behavior varies by culture. Our study confirms our proposition that the social influence based in culture will provide additional explanatory power concerning consumers' intention to use a technology.