Understanding the roles of emotion in technology acceptance

While emotion has been recognized to have a crucial role in decision making in marketing, organization/industrial management, and psychology; in IS the roles of emotion are understudied. Particularly, research in acceptance and use of technology is dominated by traditional cognitive paradigm. This study proposes and tests the affective extension of UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology). Two affective constructs, core affective experience (emotional state) and negative affectivity (emotional trait) were introduced to UTAUT to form an integrated model of acceptance and use of technology.; The objectives of this study are to validate UTAUT and to determine the roles of emotional state and emotional trait in technology acceptance and use. Specifically, what is the role of core affective experience in determining users' intention to use a technology? And what are the relationships between negative affectivity and other constructs in the model?; The proposed integrated model was tested in a pilot study and validated with two survey studies of the case of acceptance and use of an end-user computing technology in a classroom context. Most aspects of the model are confirmed for both experienced and inexperienced users. Core affective experience does have impact on behavioral intention to use a technology beyond the effects of cognitive variables in UTAUT. In particular, activation has significant impact on inexperienced users' behavioral intention while pleasantness is a significant determinant of experienced users' behavioral intention. The trait of negative affectivity is a significant antecedent to pleasantness; the higher the level of negative affectivity the lower the experience of pleasantness is reported. Furthermore, individual with higher negative affectivity trait might feel being less supported by organization in the use of a technology.; Thus, introducing core affective experience and negative affectivity into UTAUT to form an integrated model advances the theory and provides a useful tool for IS researchers and practitioners to better understand the likelihood of a new technology being accepted. Furthermore, understanding both cognitive and affective drivers of acceptance and use of a technology can help practitioners in designing a system, providing training intervention, and marketing of the system in a more effective way.