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Abstract
User beliefs and attitudes are key perceptions driving information technology usage. These perceptions, however, may change with time as users gain first-hand experience with IT usage, which, in turn, may change their subsequent IT usage behavior. This paper elaborates how users' beliefs and attitudes change during the course of their IT usage, defines emergent constructs driving such change, and proposes a temporal model of belief and attitude change by drawing on expectation-disconfirmation theory and the extant IT usage literature. Student data from two longitudinal studies in end-user computing (computer-based training system usage) and system development (rapid application development software usage) contexts provided empirical support for the hypothesized model, demonstrated its generalizability across technologies and usage contexts, and allowed us to probe context-specific differences. Content analysis of qualitative data validated some of our quantitative results. We report that emergent factors such as disconfirmation and satisfaction are critical to understanding changes in IT users' beliefs and attitudes and recommend that they be included in future process models of IT usage.
Keywords: Information systems, usage, acceptance, attitude, belief, perceived usefulness, expectation disconfirmation theory
Introduction
Change is an inevitable and inalienable part of human life. We continually adjust, revise, and even reverse our personal beliefs, our opinions of others, our views of social institutions, and our own behaviors as we learn more about our social environments and our own behaviors. Likewise, our beliefs, attitude, intention, and usage of information technology (IT) innovations also change over time as we experience IT usage first-hand and learn from such use. In 1990, Melone (1990) stated, "For the most part, the IS literature is silent on how users form initial attitudes about technologies and how these attitudes are modified over time" (emphasis added). Since then, although a growing body of IT usage research has examined formation of initial beliefs and attitudes, to date, very little research has been directed at explicating why and how beliefs and attitudes change over time. Explaining temporal changes in users' beliefs and attitude toward IT usage is the goal of this study.
We focus on user beliefs (specifically, perceived usefulness) and attitude because prior studies of IT usage, predominantly based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and similar models, have established these perceptions as the key...