Tourist behaviour towards self-service hotel technology adoption: Trust and subjective norm as key antecedents

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Self-service technology Technology acceptance model Structural equation modelling Trust Subjective norm Performance risk and need for interaction The hospitality industry is expanding with an ever evolving technology adoption process and novel possibilities of adoption of new technologies are constantly being explored. Over the years, several research perspectives have offered different adoption models for the implementation of such technologies. The current study extends the utility of technology acceptance model (TAM) through analysis of additional antecedent beliefs in order to predict tourists' attitude towards self-service technologies (SSTs) in the offline hospitality context. The paper further examines the impact of trust and subjective norm on consumers' (1) attitude and (2) behavioural intention towards adopting self-service hotel technologies (SSHTs). Results indicate that trust has a more significant impact on tourists' attitude, though both trust and subjective norm considerably affect tourists' behavioural intention towards adopting new technologies. Conclusion includes managerial and theoretical contributions of the study, its limitations and future research directions. In earlier decades, majority of the innovations and related theories primarily focused on development of products rather than services (Khan & Khan, 2009); the major emphasis was on product development because of its economic impact. However, over the past few years, adoption theories have been successfully applied to the service contexts With an increase in the prominence of services, emphasis has shifted from product development towards service development. As a result, new technologies are being implemented in the service sector, and self-service technologies (SSTs) are increasing being applied in the service delivery processes. SST is one of the most frequent used and widely accepted technological interfaces (Rust & Espinoza, 2006). Being part of the service industry, hotels constantly invest in SSTs for improving their service quality and reducing overall cost (Kim & Qu, 2014; Lam, Cho, & Qu, 2007). With technological advancement in the service delivery processes, 'high-touch and low-tech' method has been replaced with 'high-tech and low-touch' method. The proliferation of SSTs has led to an overall improvement in the traditional service delivery process. The majority of consumers of the service industry are now valuing new technology because of its convenience. Also, the control given by new technology provides more freedom to these customers. Increased technological adoption in the service industry (Kim, Christodoulidou, & Brewer, 2012) is the reason behind the introduction of a number of SSTs such as airport …