Factors Influencing the Acceptance of Self Service Technologies
To facilitate efficient and effective service delivery, firms are introducing self service technologies (SSTs) at an increasing pace. This article presents a meta analysis of the factors influencing customer acceptance of SSTs. The authors develop a comprehensive causal framework that integrates constructs and relationships from different technology acceptance theories, and they use the framework to guide their meta analysis of findings consolidated from 96 previous empirical articles (representing 117 independent customer samples with a cumulative sample size of 103,729 respondents) The meta analysis reveals the following key insights: (1) SST usage is influenced in a complex fashion by numerous predictors that should be examined jointly; (2) ease of use and usefulness are key mediators, and studies ignoring them may underestimate the importance of some predictors; (3) several determinants of usefulness impact ease of use, and vice versa, thereby revealing crossover effects not previously revealed; and (4) the links leading up to SST acceptance in the proposed framework are moderated by SST type (transaction/self help, kiosk/Internet, public/private, hedonic/utilitarian) and country culture (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance) Results from the meta analysis offer managerial guidance for effective implementation of SSTs and provide directions for further research to augment current knowledge of SST acceptance.