The Impact of Endogenous Motivations on Adoption of IT-Enabled Services

Philipp Wunderlich,Dirk Totzek,Johann Kranz,Daniel Veit,Arnold Picot

doi:10.1177/1094670512474841

Abstract

Transformative services represent a crucial topic in future service research. Particularly in the energy sector, consumer adoption of transformative—often IT-enabled—services is essential to increased environmental sustainability. As adopting these services increases both individual and collective well-being, research has to delve more deeply into the origins of consumers’ motivations. For this reason, this study aims at augmenting the understanding of how different types of motivation determine consumers’ intention to adopt transformative services. The proposed model integrates the theory of planned behavior and the self-determination theory and is tested with survey data gathered from 462 users and 537 nonusers of home energy management services. Results indicate that consumers’ motivations are major direct determinants of intentions to adopt. While this finding notably holds when consumers perceive the adoption as self-determined and internalize associated values such as environmentalism, motivations based on external rewards and feelings of compulsion matter to a lesser extent. A comparison of users and nonusers reveals important differences in motivation, in particular that extrinsic motivations tend to be more relevant for nonusers than for users.

Highlights

Transformative services represent a crucial topic in future service research
In investigating transformative service, which is a ‘‘service that centers on creating uplifting changes and improvements in the well-being of both individuals and communities’’ (Ostrom et al 2010, p. 12), researchers highlighted that these services should be effective for improving the sustainability of production and consumption
Service research has highlighted the crucial role of transformative services for sustainable production and consumption (Ostrom et al 2010) and as an enabler of a ‘‘society-driven innovation’’

Summary

Introduction

In the energy sector, consumer adoption of transformative—often IT-enabled—services is essential to increased environmental sustainability As adopting these services increases both individual and collective well-being, research has to delve more deeply into the origins of consumers’ motivations. Research analyzing how IS can help reduce energy consumption to support environmental sustainability is of particular interest (Watson, Boudreau, and Chen 2010) In this respect, ‘‘emerging information and communication technology services can have a major impact on future energy and resource consumption through a range of services, including remote working, energy and waste management systems, improved logistics, and so on’’ The share of renewable, often decentralized energy sources like wind or photovoltaic often produced by consumers has been expanding on a large scale (Achrol and Kotler 2012)

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