Predicting Collaboration Technology Use: Integrating Technology Adoption and Collaboration Research

The paper presents a model integrating theories from collaboration research (i.e., social presence theory, channel expansion theory, and the task closure model) with a recent theory from technology adoption research (i.e., unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, abbreviated to UTAUT) to explain the adoption and use of collaboration technology. We theorize that collaboration technology characteristics, individual and group characteristics, task characteristics, and situational characteristics are predictors of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions in UTAUT. We further theorize that the UTAUT constructs, in concert with gender, age, and experience, predict intention to use a collaboration technology, which in turn predicts use. We conducted two field studies in Finland among (1) 349 short message service (SMS) users and (2) 447 employees who were potential users of a new collaboration technology in an organization. Our model was supported in both studies. The current work contributes to research by developing and testing a technology-specific model of adoption in the collaboration context.