A meta-analysis of determinants of RFID adoption around the world: Organization, technology, and public policy

• Main Authors: Sabinne Lee, Kwangho Jung
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Emerald Publishing 2017-01-01
• Series: Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Subjects: RFID technology; Meta-analysis; Rogers’ innovation model; Fisher’s Z score
• Online Access: https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/APJIE-12-2016-010
• ISSN: 2071-1395; 2398-7812

Purpose - This paper aims to explore various factors associated with radio frequency identification (RFID) adoption with quantitative meta-analysis. More specifically, this paper attempts to measure key variables of RFID adoption derived from Rogers’ innovation theory and further examines how state intervention influences the process of RFID adoption. First, this paper compares, relying on a meta-analysis, various mean effect sizes among technological, organizational and environmental factors (i.e. government-driven policies) that Rogers suggested in his innovation model. Design/methodology/approach - In mean effect size analysis, this paper finds that the technological factor is the most powerful factor that affects the RFID adoption. The technological factor is statistically significant across all regions, including North America, Europe and Asia. The organizational factor is significant only in developing countries like Southeast Asian countries and East Asian countries. Environmental factors like government intervention for facilitating RFID adoption are strong enough only in Southeast Asia and Europe. Findings - This paper finds that government’s supportive policy is more effective in Europe but not in America, while external pressure is still more effective in Southeast Asia. These results implicate that developmentalism or government-driven policy can be effective not only in developing countries but also in the case of developed countries. In addition, this paper conducts a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) analysis based on Fisher’s standardized score. Originality/value - In SUR analysis, this paper finds that the correlations between RFID adoption intention and three innovation factors vary across industrial areas. More specifically, the manufacturing area shows negative moderating effect on all three equations where correlations between Rogers’ innovation factors and RFID adoption intention are meta-dependent variables. Also, RFID adoption is accelerated when the size of the firm is large or the location of the firm is in Southeast Asia. This result implicates that the aspect of technology adoption can be changed by region and type of industry.