The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has reshaped human behaviors and switched communication systems from face-to-face to digital communication technologies. This study aimed to examine how digital transformation practices affect human behavioral change digitally, and how perceived COVID-19 severity affects digital transformation practices and behavioral decisions. We use the traditional theory of planned behavior (TPB) to determine new behavioral roles in the digital era, namely digitally planned and transformed behavior. The quantitative survey method was designed to collect cross-sectional data from 550 Thai citizens to provide the conceptual evidence of key proximal measures of digital attitude, digital social norms, digital behavioral control perception, and the digital behavioral decision to predict digitally planned and transformed behavior. The results show that people are more likely to digitalize than before, which predicts the decision to behave digitally at 93.9% of the variability, more than 75% of the predictive power of the total variance suggested by Hair, Ringle, and Sarstedt [1]. However, the higher the COVID-19 severity, the more likely digital transformation is impactful (β = 0.481). This study provides interesting evidence that people struggle to transform their digital behavior during the pandemic. We demonstrate that digital transformation can offer the desired consequences by cultivating digital attitudes, promoting digital social norms, increasing digital behavioral control perception, and enhancing digital behavioral decisions.
A COVID-19 disruption: The great acceleration of digitally planned and transformed behaviors in Thailand