기술수용모델에서 타인의 수용정도가 지각된 위험에 미치는 영향: 웨어러블 기기를 중심으로

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) explains an individual’s cognitive acceptance process of an innovation (i.e., a new product or service). It specifies the causal linkages between two key beliefs (i.e., perceived usefulness and perceived easy of use) and an individual’s attitude and intention to adopt an innovation. In contrast, the Bass Model (BM) explains the acceptance process of an innovation which is defined by two forces in a social system: One is the effect of imitators and the other is the effect of imitators. The former is referred to as the external effect which is independent from others in a diffusion system and the latter is referred to as the internal effect which is dependent on others in the system. The TAM may be linked with the BM because the both models explain the adoption process of an innovation even though their frameworks are different. The integration of the two models may allow researchers to systematically understand the adoption process of an innovation. Thus, we tried to link the two models based on the role of perceived risk in the adoption process. The previous studies have presented different roles of perceived risk in the adoption process of an innovation. Some researchers treat the perceived risk as an influential variable on consumers’ adoption intentions whereas others do it as a mediating variable in the adoption process. Thus, we conducted an experiment study to identify the true role of perceived risk in the adoption process. Subjects for the experiment study were 160 university students in Korea. They were randomly assigned to one of three conditions which represent different levels of others’ adoptions of a new product: Other’s choice probabilities of a new product were 0, 0.2, and 0.5 in the three conditions. According to the empirical study, the perceived risk has a main effect on individuals’ adoption intentions. Thus, based on the empirical finding, we proposed an integration model of the two models (i.e., TAM and BM) in which the external effect of the BM is represented as a function of the perceived usefulness and easy of use whereas the internal effect of the BM is done as a function of the perceived risk. We believe that the proposed model may give researchers some valuable insights on consumers’ adoption behaviors of an innovation.