EXAMINING GENDER EFFECTS IN TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE BY ARABIAN.pdfVIP

EXAMINING GENDER EFFECTS IN TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE BY ARABIAN WORKERS: A SURVEY STUDY Han-fen Hu, Department of Operations and Information Systems, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA, han-fen.hu@ Said S. Al-Gahtani, Department of Management Information Systems, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, ssalgahtani@.sa Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, Department of Operations and Information Systems, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA, actph@ Abstract While information technology is increasingly ubiquitous globally, the pace at which the technology has disseminated varies in different regions. We study technology acceptance by working individuals in the Arabian region, which has recorded substantial growths in technology infrastructure and deployments. We focus on gender because the Arabian region has a long-standing cultural tradition and entrenched social norms that distinctly define the gender roles. We develop a factor model, premised on the theory of planned behavior and the technology acceptance model, which explains the focal technology acceptance phenomenon. We test the model and the hypotheses with the responses from 1,088 Arabian workers from 56 firms that parti cipate in our survey voluntarily. The model accounts for a significant portion of the variances in the workers’ intentions to use computer technology. We find that gender moderates the effect of subjective norms on intention (significantly stronger for males than for female workers) and the influence of perceived usefulness on attitude (significantly stronger for male than for female workers). However, the moderating role of gender appears insignificant on other relationships we hypothesized. Our findings have several important implications for both resear