An Analysis of the Diffusion of RFID in the UK Logistics Sector Using a Technology-Acceptance Perspective

Literature Survey

Since a detailed exposition of the RFID literature has been presented in another chapter (Ramanathan et al., 2014) in this book, we do not repeat this literature here. Instead, we focus on the theoretical framework used in this chapter, namely the Technology Assessment Model (TAM).

TAM was originally proposed by Davis (1989). The basic assumption of the TAM is that actual use of an innovation depends on the intention to make use of the technology, and that intention depends on individual attitudes toward using the technology and its perceived usefulness (Muller-Seitz et al., 2009). The attitude toward using the technology arises from the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of use. Many researchers have utilized and validated TAM for use with numerous technological environments. According to Hossain & Prybutok (2008), some studies suggested that TAM successfully predicts an individual’s acceptance of various corporate information technologies. Furthermore, TAM may hold across technologies, people, settings and times. Recently, it has been applied to the introduction of healthcare information systems (Pai & Huang, 2011), RFID technology acceptance at US universities (Hossain & Prybutok, 2008), and RFID technology acceptance in the German electronic retail sector (Muller-Seitz et al., 2009). The research model of these studies were based on TAM and have used the revised TAM proposed by Davis et al. (1989), which include perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and the intention to use. Hossain and Prybutok (2008) extended TAM by adding perceived cultural influence, perceived privacy, perceived regulations’ influence, and perceived security to the model. Table 1 presents the definitions of some common TAM constructs and related literature.