D11.3: Economic aspects of mobility and identity

Title: TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (TAM)

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by Davis is based on TRA and tailored towards the acceptance of information technology (IT). A key purpose of TAM is to provide a basis for tracing the impact of external variables on internal beliefs, attitudes and intentions. The resulting hypothesis framework of Davis is visualised in . In his research, two main factors are of prime relevance in explaining system usage. Namely these are:

1. “Perceived ease of use”: The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort.

2. “Perceived usefulness”: The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance.

Figure : Hypothesis Framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

Various researchers have simplified TAM by removing the attitude construct found in TRA from the current specification (e.g. Venkatesh et al.). Moreover, there are several attempts to extend TAM (cf. ), which generally have taken one of three approaches:

1. Introducing factors from related models 

2. Introducing additional or alternative belief factors (risk, emotion, etc.) 

3. Examining antecedents and moderators of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use  

Also when TAM extends TRA, some limitations can also be found:  

1. Both TRA and TAM have strong behavioural elements, assuming that when someone forms an intention to act, they will be free to act without limitation.  

2. However, in practice constraints such as limited ability, time, environmental or organisational limits, and unconscious habits will limit the freedom to act.