Family Robots: Testing a Variety of Theories in Innovation Adoption

• Activity Number: 656
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Marketing
• Author(s): Nai-Hua Chen*+ and Stephen Chi-Tsun Huang+
• Companies: Chienkuo Technology University and National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology
• Keywords: TPB ; TAM ; TRA ; global identity

Abstract

The aim of this study was twofold: (a) to test a series of innovation adoption theories, in particular the TAM and TPB, to examine which models may better predict consumer behavioral intention to use domestic robots, and (b) to examine whether lead-usership and global identity may also predict such intentions. With a sample of 299 potential consumers in Taiwan, a rapidly aging society with increasing labor costs, this study has the following findings. (1) The TPB model accounts for 55% of the variance in intentions, and better predicts purchase intention with regard to domestic robots than the TAM and the TRA. (2) In the TPB model, the effects of usefulness and ease of use on intentions are mediated by attitude. (3) We extended the original TBP model by adding two factors, global identity and lead-usership, as two additional predictors of adoption intention. (4) In addition, as lead-usership is included in the extended model, the impact of PBC vanishes. The managerial and theoretical implications of this study are also provided, as well as suggestions for future research.