Comparing smart card adoption in Singapore and Australian universities

College and university environments offer one of the best opportunities for the adoption of smart card technology. This study explores the possibility of developing smart card as a university application and investigates whether it will help to reduce the university business administration procedures as well as increase their service efficiency. This involved investigating the response of two groups (experienced and non-experienced) towards the adoption or the intention to embrace the technology of a university smart card. Studying the experiences gained by Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore) students using smart card application in their university may provide an insightful picture for a university that is considering adopting such a technological innovation. Results show that compatibility pre-adoption construct is the key element that plays the most influential factor in motivating local students for adoption. This suggests that to ensure adoption, it is important to guarantee that the university smart cards are socially acceptable among the university students (fit well with the students' norm and environment). Another implication of this study is that Murdoch University (MU, Australia) students would most probably be willing to accept the adoption of a university smart card given that the results show MU students' response of (probability=168/200) and NTU students' response of 100% (probability=50/50) acceptance toward using their university smart card. The results also show a significant culture difference between MU students and NTU students, indicating that smart card manufacturer should take note of the ranking of user preference when designing a university smart card in order to optimize the adoption process. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.