Women Entrepreneurs and It Usage: the Impact of Traits

In many IT studies, the system’s perceived usefulness and ease of use have emerged as important factors influencing the usage of information technologies. A similar amount of work has been directed to investigating their determinants, such as organizational factors, environmental factors, demographic factors, etc., but very often overlooked are the unique traits of users or user groups. The current research adopts the technology acceptance model (TAM) in examining the relationship between IT usage, the system’s usefulness and ease of use, and the entrepreneurial traits (such as innovativeness, risk-taking propensity, perseverance, and flexibility) of women entrepreneurs. The results show that perceived usefulness has influence on information technology usage. Perceived ease of use has an indirect influence (via perceived usefulness) on usage. Contrary to TAM, no significant direct relationship was found between perceived ease of use and usage. Innovativeness, risk-taking propensity, and flexibility were found to determine perceived usefulness. Perceived ease of use is determined by innovativeness, and marginally by flexibility. Important implications for theory and practice are discussed.