Usefulness and Self-Expressiveness: Extending TAM to Explain the Adoption of a Mobile Parking Service

Research on the adoption of mobile services in everyday life contexts have shown how important entertainment and self -expressiveness are to the users’ adoption of these services. However, as illustrated by the variables of the much applied TAM model, utilitarian motivations are still focused in ICT-adoption research. Mobile parking services may be used as a “crucial test” of the importance of utilitarian versus non-utilitarian motivations in the adoption of mobile services. In a field study, 459 trial users of mobile parking services were studied using a TAM model extended with the motivational influence of self-expressiveness. The results show that even if mobile parking services have been designed to meet the functional needs of the parking car driver, both the derived motivations of self expressiveness and the extrinsic motivations of usefulness are important in explaining trial users’ adoption of the services.