Beyond Innovation Characteristics: Effects of Adopter Categories on the Acceptance Outcomes of Online Shopping

Over the past two decades, much research effort has been directed to identifying salient perceptions of innovation characteristics that determine user acceptance of technology, but largely ignored the potential effect of individual adopter differences. According to innovation diffusion theory, some individuals are more likely to adopt an innovation than others because of their differences in individual innovativeness and can be grouped into distinct adopter categories based on their innovativeness. The present research develops a new measure of adopter categories and examines the role of adopter categories in determining user acceptance outcomes (adoption behavior, current use, and future use intention) over and above perceived innovation characteristics in the adoption context of online shopping. More than 400 individuals including 115 business professionals participated in the study. Results obtained through PLS analyses confirm the important role of adopter categories in determining the acceptance outcomes beyond the perceptions of innovation characteristics.