What Drives Infrastructure Participants to Adopt Digital Technology: A Nexus of Internal and External Factors

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Abstract
Given the potential of digital technologies in value-adding and decision support in infrastructure projects, the promotion of digital technologies, how factors of government promotion, technological development, and the organization’s technology capability and capacity influence digital technology adoption is necessary but still unclear. This research aims to identify the environmental, technological, and organizational factors, as well as the interactive relationships among them, for infrastructure participants’ intention to adopt digital technologies. The extended Technology Acceptance Model (e-TAM) was used as a theoretical base to develop a hypothesis of the influencing paths of internal and external factors, with perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU), and perceived image improvement (PII) as critical internal factors, and technological and environmental factors as external factors. The questionnaire survey collected 172 valid responses and structural equation modeling was applied for the hypothesis testing. The model fitting results indicated that intentions of digital adoption are directly influenced by PU as internal factors and environmental factors, while PEU, PII, and technological factors play indirect roles. As the interaction of external and internal factors, environmental factors directly affect PEU, and technological factors significantly correlate with PU. The findings supported most of the hypothesis and contributed to providing guidance for infrastructure participants’ digital adoption practice.
Funding Information
  • Social Science Foundation of Xi’an City (23GL66, 22AZD099, 2022-ZL-03)
  • National Social Science Fund of China (23GL66, 22AZD099, 2022-ZL-03)
  • Science and Technology Project of the Sichuan Transportation Department (23GL66, 22AZD099, 2022-ZL-03)

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