User Acceptance of Technology: Statistical Analysis of Training's Impact on Local Government Employees' Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease-of-Use

Introduction

The increased adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media platforms over the years has served to improve different aspects of government (such as, efficiency, performance, productivity, responsiveness, and involvement). This in turn has led to the development of various paradigms, including, electronic government, government 2.0, smart government, smart cities, and smart governance (Layne & Lee, 2001; Moon, 2002; Mele, 2008; Khan & Park, 2013; Albino et al., 2015; Anthopoulos et al., 2016; Meijer et al., 2016; Scholl & Alawadhi, 2016; Falco et al., 2018; Gil-Garcia et al, 2018; Viale-Pereira et al., 2018; Lember et al., 2019).

The adoption and diffusion of technological innovations in government organizations has been studied extensively. Two of the most prominent theories are the diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 1962; 1995) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989). In this model, Davis highlights that innovations are only successful when the technology is accepted, adopted, and used in practice. The innovation literature suggests that in private, as well as public organizations, it is the users’ perceptions of an innovation that affect adoption rather than the innovation as defined by experts or change agents (Rogers, 1995). As emphasized by Davis (1989), Rogers (1995), Korteland and Bekkers (2008), users’ perceived usefulness and ease-of-use of technology within an organization are key elements explaining the successful acceptance of innovations. Similarly, scholars have also underlined the importance of training for the successful adoption and acceptance of ICTs by end users (Lee et al., 1995; Nelson & Cheney, 1987; Rajagopalan et al., 2007).

However, despite the increasing importance of ICTs in local governments, the number of studies on their adoption by government employees is limited (for example, Roberts & Henderson, 2000; Venkatesh et al., 2003; Antón et al., 2014). The same applies to the limited number of studies on the impact of training on perceived usefulness and ease-of-use (Venkatesh & Davis, 1996; Xia & Lee, 2000). Therefore, this article seeks to fill this research gap by investigating the impact of training on the perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use of a specific technological innovation in a sample of government employees, and tries to answer the following research question: what is the impact of training on government employees’ perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use of a social media platform?