When Technology is Mandatory - Factors Influencing Users Satisfaction

One commonly acknowledged factor in the successful implementation of any application or information system is user satisfaction. This paper studied users' judgments on a new technology in an educational context. This study found that, while perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use each had a positive correlation with user satisfaction, there are likely to be additional factors that contribute to user satisfaction. 1: Introduction and Prior Research Significant progress has been made over the last decade in predicting user acceptance of information systems and software applications. In particular, substantial theoretical and empirical support has accumulated in favour of the technology acceptance model (TAM) [1,5,8]. TAM theorises that an individual’s behaviour intention to use a system is determined by his or her perceived usefulness in that system and his or her perceived ease of use of that system. Perceived usefulness is the degree to which an individual believes that a particular information system would enhance his or her job performance. Perceived ease of use is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort [5]. Other studies have since extended TAM to include other variables such as attitude towards the technology, information quality, system quality, individual impact such as users experience, and organisational impact to be drivers of user acceptance [6,7,8]. One of the findings reported in a recent study by Bhattacherjee [4, p.1] was that user satisfaction is influenced by perceived usefulness and users' confirmation of expectation from prior IS use. Results of Baroudi et al's study [3] indicate that high user satisfaction with a system leads to greater system usage. Most of the above-mentioned studies have researched user satisfaction and acceptance in situations where users have options in choosing their tools and systems. However in many industrial and educational environments only particular technology is available to users. This raises questions as to whether the user satisfaction/acceptance influences of TAM apply in these mandatory environments. This paper attempts to address some of these questions by investigating the end users’ perception of usefulness and ease of use of the MS Access application and their satisfaction with the application in a mandatory situation.