Understanding Information Systems Usage Behavior: An Evolutionary Psychology Perspective

• Main Authors: Chun-hui Wu, 吳純慧
• Other Authors: Kwoting Fang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/49549518233584149061

博士 === 雲林科技大學 === 資訊管理系博士班 === 98 === Information systems (IS) and technologies are a key enabling tool for organizations to create new products and services, as well as new business models. Organizations are increasingly dependant on IS to support their business processes in helping them solve problems and overcome challenges. IS usage has thus become a crucial issue in practice and current research. This study aimed to generally explain IS usage behavior for different systems/technologies in diverse organization contexts, any country and region. From the evolutionary psychology perspective, two important evolved psychological traits (i.e., least effort and social interaction) were explored to have impacts on people''s decision making on modern systems/technologies. Based on these two psychological traits, a new evolutionary theory, namely technology interaction theory, was conducted to propose two negative causal links between the "interaction" and the "cognitive effort" and between the "cognitive adaptation" and the "cognitive effort". Self-efficacy theory was integrated with this new theory to explain the different behaviors among individuals who have the same psychological traits. Both propositions were further interpreted with qualitative data collected by the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique within an e-learning context. Three contributions were provided by this study: (1) conducting an in-depth investigation toward IS usage behavior, (2) taking into account the impact of social factors on IS usage behavior, (3) and then developing a new evolutionary theory which consisted of three fundamental, generic variables – interaction, cognitive adaptation, cognitive effort. In particular, this study contributed to IS research by providing additional insights into how the interaction trait and cognitive adaptation have impacts on required cognitive effort. Finally, limitations, practical implications, and recommendations for future research were discussed.