Full Length ArticleTechnophobia without boarders: The influence of technophobia and emotional intelligence on technology acceptance and the moderating influence of organizational climate☆
Introduction
Technophobia extends beyond the boundaries of one country as it is a behavior toward technology issue, in other words, technophobia coexists with technology regardless of physical location. Many studies have examined technophobia in countries like Iran (e.g. Salamzadeh, Mirakhori, Mobaraki, & Targhi, 2013), Israel (e.g. Nimrod, 2018), Ireland (e.g. Hogan, 2006), United Kingdom (e.g. Bozionelos, 1996), Netherland and Turkey (e.g. Tekinarslan, 2008). In addition, Rosen and Weil (1995) did a cross-cultural comparison in ten countries: Australia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Spain, Yugoslavia, and the USA. Then Weil and Rosen (1995) examined technophobia in 23 countries: USA, Yugoslavia, Thailand, Spain, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Kenya, Japan, Italy, Israel, Indonesia, India, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Australia, and Argentina. But there is a major limitation in the existing body of literature since the vast majority of studies examine technophobia in the context of one technology; mainly computers. The body of literature lacks measuring tools for technophobia that are independent of a specific technology (Celaya, 1996, Sinkovics et al., 2002). Khasawneh (2018) developed a technophobia scale that measures it in a broader context that incorporates technology in general, without tying it just to computers. Within this new context, there is a lack of literature in studies that examine technophobia's impact or influence on other variables.
Companies constantly introduce new technologies into their work environments to retain competitive advantages and stay in business. The spending on technology in the U.S. alone was $236.6 billion and expected to grow to $330.7 in 2017(IDC, 2014) but in the research report by CompTIA, they argue that the U.S. spending was $1.5 trillion (IT Industry Outlook, 2018). But technologies cannot improve organizations if employees choose not to adopt them. Markus and Keil (1994) state that “If the desired improvement conflicts with what people are motivated to do, a system alone will not solve the problem” (p.24). Organizations, more specifically decision makers, are faced with the daunting task of assessing their organizations' technical competence. This task is especially hard when implementing a new technology since the new technology will present a new technical challenge to employees and managers alike. Continuous technological proliferation pressures individuals to accept new technologies within a very short period of time. And the introduction of technological changes can provoke emotional and cognitive reactions (Cambre & Cook, 1985). This fear and anxiety may manifest itself in the form of a phobia-induced by technology; technophobia. This shows that technophobia can be a daunting impediment to companies that constantly change technologies or experience technological changes. But the use of new technology puts a great deal of pressure on employees and might cause poor performance (Show-Hui & Wen-Kai, 2010). And this pressure might impact employees' emotions which in turns may influence their psychological orientations toward technology. All of these factors can influence employees' emotions, which affect their attitudes toward technology. This suggests that variables such as employees' technophobia and emotional intelligence are major factors that need to be examined. The current study argues that technophobia and emotional intelligence might be good predictor variables that influence employees’ technology acceptance.
In addition, the workplace is a fertile ground for research on personal behavior as it might affect employees' behavior (Drexler, 1977a, Drexler, 1977b). Employees operate in the context of what is referred to as organizational climate and it is one of the many variables that influence employees’ attitudes within a workplace. Organizational climate is one of many variables that influence employees' attitudes within a work environment. Previous researchers have argued that organizational climates affect employees' behavior (Pena-Suarez, Muniz, Campillo-Alvarez, Fonseca-Pedrero, & Garcia-Cueto, 2013). Organizational climates influence employees' performance by providing an antecedent for employee behavior. The concept of organizational climate helps us understand how organizations can provide meaningful environments to their members (Payne & Pugh, 1976). Because of its impact on many aspects of the workplace, Drexler, 1977a, Drexler, 1977b encouraged researchers to measure organizational climate. The current study chose organizational climate as a moderating variable because of its impact on employees’ behavior and the lack of prior research on its moderating impact on the correlation between technophobia and technology acceptance.
Finally, Sinkovics et al. (2002) also point out a lack of research on the role of technophobia and technology adoption. The aforementioned studies point to the importance of studying technophobia as well as variables like emotional intelligence as predictor variables in an organizational setting. This study will expand our knowledge of factors that might influence employees' adoption of new technologies. More specifically, this study will examine employees' technophobia, in a novel approach, as well as emotional intelligence influence on technology acceptance to identify whether one or both, might influence employees’ technology acceptance. Furthermore, the study will inspect the moderating influence of organizational climate. The suggested framework of this study is presented in Fig. 1. There are many intrinsic and extrinsic variables that might influence the relationship between technophobia and technology acceptance, including all or most of them would lead to a lengthy survey with would limit the sample size; for many reasons such as participation fatigue. The current study limited its focus to emotional intelligence and organizational climate and future researchers are encouraged to explore other variables such as locus of control, personality type, or leadership style.
This study compliment Joo and Sang (2013) study in which they argue that users' intrinsic motivation in the form of uses and gratifications theory might influence users’ acceptance of the technology. In the same notion, the current study argues that users intrinsic feeling manifested in technophobia and emotional intelligence might influence their technology acceptance behavior in an organizational setting.
Section snippets
Technophobia
The automation of the workplace has continued to increase ever since the introduction of computers in the 1970s. From the 1970s to the 1990s, computers were the pinnacle of workplace technology. In the narrow context of computers, technophobia is a barrier to company's development; it is a major factor in hindering employees' adaption to new technologies (Rosen & Weil, 1995) since 20%–33% of Americans could be classified as technophobes (Celaya, 1996). Research on technophobia is dominated by
Population, sample, subjects
Since technophobia is a major variable of this study, an online tool to collect data was not utilized which impacted the number of participants in this study. Printed surveys were distributed to participating businesses and companies. A self-addressed envelope (to the author) with the required postage, was provided with each survey. Researcher contact information was provided in case any questions arose. Participants were provided instruction on how to fill out the survey and there was no time
Results
Multicollinearity test showed that it is not an issue; tolerance was greater than 0.10 (0.997) and variance inflation factor (VIF) was less than 10 (1.0003). No significant correlation was found between technophobia, emotional intelligence, and organizational climate. A significant correlation was found between technophobia and technology acceptance (r = −0.309, p < .01), and emotional intelligence and technology acceptance (r = 0.214, p < .05).
As shown in Table 6, the t-test shows that there
Discussion
The goal of this study was to utilize a novel approach to measure technophobia as suggested by Khasawneh (2018). Using the new scale of technophobia, the study aimed to examine the effects of technophobia and emotional intelligence on technology acceptance among employees’ and technology users. Another goal of this study was to examine the moderating influence of organizational climate on that relationship. The overall results support the suggested framework of the study as presented in Fig. 1.
Implication
The results of this study will greatly benefit organizations since it shows that variables like technophobia not only still hunt employees in the contemporary workplace but can influence employees' attitude and use of technology. Yet, practitioners and researchers, for the most part, ignore such variable and the few who do not still use outdated scales to measure ‘technophobia’ in their company or sample which significantly influence the results of their work; it may not accurately reflect the
Limitation
This study has limitations that should be taken into consideration before interpreting the findings. First, the body of literature that examines technophobia outside of computers or a specific technology is very limited, and the findings of this study could not be validated or cross-examined with other studies. Future researchers might want to examine the factors of this study in a different sample to provide this missing piece of literature. Second, the current study examined the moderating
References (82)
- et al.
Technophobia and personality subtypes in a sample of South African university students
Computers in Human Behavior
(2000) - et al.
Enticing on-line Consumers: An extended technology acceptance perspective
Information & Management
(2002) - et al.
A critical evaluation of the emotional intelligence construct
Personality and Individual Differences
(2000) - et al.
Exploring Koreans' smartphone usage: An integrated model of the technology acceptance model and uses and gratifications theory
Computers in Human Behavior
(2013) Personality, individual characteristics, and Predisposition to Technophobia: Some answers, questions, and points to Ponder about
Information Sciences
(2005)- et al.
An investigation of framing and scaling as confounding variables in information outcomes: The case of Technophobia
Information Science
(2003) - et al.
Assessing technophobia and technophilia: Development and validation of a questionnaire
Technology in Society
(2017) - et al.
On the dimensional structure of emotional intelligence
Personality and Individual Differences
(2000) - et al.
Treating technophobia: A longitudinal evaluation of the computerphobia reduction Program
Computers in Human Behavior
(1993) - et al.
Computer anxiety: A cross-cultural comparison of university students in ten countries
Computers in Human Behavior
(1995)
Testing the technology acceptance model across cultures: A three country study
Information Management
Relation of employee and manager emotional intelligence to job satsfaction and performance
Journal of Vocational Behavior
Computer anxiety: A cross-cultural comparative study of Dutch and Turkish university students
Computers in Human Behavior
The psychological impact of technology from a global perspective: A study of technological sophistication and technophia in university students from twenty-three countries
Computers in Human Behavior
Management misinformation systems
Management Science
A conceptual and operational definition of personal innovativeness in the domain information technology
Information Systems Research
Using a modified technology acceptance model in hospital
International Journal of Medical Information
Multiple Regression: Testing and interpreting interactions
The Bar-On model of emotional-social intelligence (ESI)
Psicothema
Emotion and intuition: Effects of positive and negative mood on implicit judgments of semantic coherence
Psychological Science
Context-sensitive mobile services for police officers: A re-assessment of TAM
Psychology of computer use: XXXLX. Prevalence of computer anxiety in British managers and professionals
Psychological Reports
The impact of computer anxiety and self-efficacy upon performance
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Emotion at work: Identifying the emotional climate of night nursing
Journal of Management in Medicine
Computer Anxiety: Definitions, measurement, and correlates
Journal of Educational Computing Research
The relationship between technophobia among the manufacturing
The modified technology acceptance model for private clinical physicians: A case study in Malaysia, Penang
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
“Overview of the technology acceptance model: Origins, developments and future directions, “Indiana University, USA
Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems
A review and critique of emotional intelligence measures
Journal of Organizational Behavior
A technology acceptance model for empirically testing new end-user information Systems: Theory and results (doctoral dissertation) retrieved from MIT sloan school of management
Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and use acceptance of information technology
MIS Quarterly
User acceptance of computer technology: A comparison of two theoretical models
Management Science
Organizational climate: Its homogeneity within organizations
Journal of Applied Psychology
Organizational climate: Its homogeneity within organizations
Journal of Applied Psychology
Control: Organizational and economic approaches
Management Science
Human factors and human consequences: Opening commentary
Environmental variation in studies of organizational behaviour
Psychological Bulletin
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence and transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analysis
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies
Police use of information technologies in criminal investigation
European Scientific Journal
Technophobia among older adults in Ireland
Irish Journal of Management
Cited by (55)
Vizago Project: Online support for maxillofacial surgeons in low-income regions
2023, Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial SurgeryPredicting the change trajectory of employee robot-phobia in the workplace: The role of perceived robot advantageousness and anthropomorphism
2022, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :Introducing new technologies, such as robots in the workplace, creates new situations where employees have no experience. The unpredictability of such unusual situations causes their fear and anxiety (Khasawneh, 2018b; Miller, Seligman, & Kurlander, 1975). Unlike other new technologies (e.g., computers, fax machines), modern social robots exhibited higher levels of autonomy and human-like characteristics, such as human-like appearance, self-consciousness, memory, sensory, and trainability.
Proposal for modeling social robot acceptance by retail customers: CAN model + technophobia
2022, Journal of Retailing and Consumer ServicesCitation Excerpt :Technophobia can be defined as “a negative psychological reaction toward technology, which can arise in varying forms and intensity” (Sinkovics et al., 2002, p. 4). One essential characteristic of this response to technology is its irrational nature (Khasawneh, 2018), with some authors even considering it a pathological disorder that could potentially be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (Brosnan, 2002; Thorpe and Brosnan, 2007). The inclusion of this variable is justified due to the prevalence of technophobia in today's society, as it is estimated to affect 30% of the general population.
Acceptance of digital twins of customer demands for supply chain optimisation: an analysis of three hierarchical digital twin levels
2024, Industrial Management and Data Systems
- ☆
His research focus is in studying technophobia and its impact on technology adoption.