Mandatory and Voluntary Adoption of RFID

Introduction

Because of its distinct features Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has a tremendous potential to offer benefits to individuals and organizations, and that makes the Information System (IS) architects to innovate newer and useful applications of RFID every day. RFIDhas already been used in hundreds of applications around the world (for a brief list see studies including Jian & Wu, 2013; Wyld, 2006). It is one of the most effective technologies which identifies an object automatically and uniquely, and can store enormous amount of data for many years which can later be retrieved as information as required (Hossain & Quaddus, 2011; Hossain & Quaddus, 2013). To achieve organizational efficiency, many organizations have implemented RFID and made it mandatory for the employees - most popularly as an access control mechanism and to track valuable assets (Hossain & Quaddus, 2013). Meanwhile, with different motivations, many nations have developed and implemented RFID-based automated systems in various public services. In national applications, the adoption of RFID is sometimes mandatory for the citizens; whereas, to choose the level of adoption usually is voluntary. In both organizational and national contexts, though the initial adoption decision is taken at organization/agency-level, the success of RFID is mainly dependent on individual’s perceptions toward this technology and, more importantly, on the intention of the individuals to use RFID.

Here, mandatory use environment for RFID is defined as one in which the users have no choice but require to use RFID technology, in a form of application(s), in order to create/maintain his/her personal/business position into a society/industry (adapted from Brown, Massey, Montoya-Weiss, & Burkman, 2002). Conversely, voluntary environment is defined as one in which the users enjoy the liberty deciding whether to accept (or not to accept) an RFID application. Scholars demonstrate that as the adoption of RFID technology is moving from mandatory to voluntary, firms are looking for tools, frameworks, and methodologies to enable them to evaluate the real impact of RFID technology on their business processes (Linda & Samuel, 2007; Wen, Zailani, & Fernando, 2009), which underscores the necessity of studying the individual-level adoption of RFID under the light of compulsion as well voluntary initiative. Individual, in this study, is considered as an independent individual (e.g., a citizen) - not an employee of an organization, for instance. In general, perceptions of an employee are shaped by the organizational objectives and strategies. In most of the times, the employee does not enjoy significant personal-preference or perception toward the adoption (appears as like working in a mandatory environment); using a particular reporting system, for example, is often a job requirement rather than a personal choice. On the contrary, an independent individual (e.g., citizen) develops his/her own perception and may reserve the choice whether to adopt a system, and also to decide the level of usage.