Why people reject or use virtual processes: Understanding the variance of users' resistance

The globalization and the continuing growth of internet-based processes and services makes it necessary to examine the emerging user resistance phenomenon from a new theoretical perspective. In order to verify the user resistance’s core claims, we designed a research model and subsequently developed measurement instruments to empirically analyze and test why people reject or use a process in a virtual environment. Therefore we investigated the “airport check-in” process as our process of interest and conducted a questionnaire-based survey with 183 participants in total. The survey was carried out at Frankfurt Airport as well as at Leipzig Airport in Germany. The results indicate that perceived process characteristics, service quality and net benefit play an important role in user resistance towards conducting a process virtually. We provide empirical evidence for the validity of user resistance, and demonstrate that our model is statistically significant and well constructed.