Technology Acceptance Model for Mobile Services as a Design Framework - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 82

Figure 2. The basic concept underlying technology acceptance models (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, &
Davis, 2003).

fulness affect the intention to use. Davis (1989)
defines perceived ease of use as “ the degree to
which a person believes that using a particular
system would be free from effort ” and perceived
usefulness as “ the degree to which a person be-
lieves that using a particular system would en-
hance his or her job performance” . Perceived
ease of use also affects the perceived usefulness
(Figure 3). The intention to use affects the real
usage behavior. TAM was designed to study in-
formation systems at work to predict whether the
users will actually take a certain system into use
in their jobs. The model provides a tool to study
the impact of external variables on internal beliefs,
attitudes and intentions.
TAM deals with perceptions; it is not based
on observing real usage but on users reporting
their conceptions. The instruments used in con-
nection with TAM are surveys, where the questions
are constructed in such a way that they reflect the
different aspects of TAM. The survey questions
related to usefulness can be, for instance: “Using
this system improves the quality of the work I
do” or “Using this system saves my time”. The
survey questions related to ease of use can be, for

instance: “The system often behaves in unex-
pected ways” or “It is easy for me to remember
how to perform tasks using this system”.
TAM was originally developed for studying
technology at work, but it has often been used to
study user acceptance of Internet services as well
(Gefen, Karahanna, & Straub, 2003; Barnes &
Huff, 2003; Chen, Gillenson, & Sherell, 2004). Ge-
fen et al. (2003) have studied TAM in connection
with e-commerce. They have extended TAM to
this application area and propose that trust should
be included in the research model to predict the
purchase intentions of on-line customers.
The Technology Acceptance Model constitutes
a solid framework to identify issues that may af-
fect user acceptance of technical solutions. Davis
and Venkatesh (2004) have proved that the model
can be enhanced from the original purpose of
studying user acceptance of existing products to
study planned product concepts, e.g. in the form of
mock-ups. This suggests that TAM could also be
used in connection with technology development
projects and processes to assess the usefulness of
proposed solutions.

Figure 3. Technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989).