How do Perceived Enjoyment and Perceived Usefulness of a Software Product Interact over Time to Impact Technology Acceptance?

Two recent meta-analyses of Technology Acceptance Model have come to different conclusions regarding the impacts of Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Enjoyment (PE) on Behavioral Intention (BI) of users of utilitarian software. While (Wu, J., and Lu, X. (2013) Effects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators on using utilitarian, hedonic, and dual-purposed information systems: a meta-analysis. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst., 14) found PU to be more important than PE in the context of BI of users of utilitarian software, (Gerow, J. E., Ayyagari, R., Thatcher, J. B., and Roth, P. L. (2013). Can we have fun@ work? The role of intrinsic motivation for utilitarian systems. Eur. J. Inf. Syst., 22, 360-380) found both to be equally relevant. In this study, we hypothesize that the conflicting findings of both studies can be explained if we take in consideration the impact of systematic temporal variations in PU and PE, their interactional effects on BI and their differential impacts on BI due to users' enduring personality factors. We test our hypotheses in a longitudinal study with actual users of two task planning applications. Round 2 (Time 2) of the longitudinal study was conducted 1 year after Round 1 (Time 1). The findings broadly support the proposed hypotheses and have useful implications for software product decisions on when and how much to focus on PE versus PU.