Factors influencing the adoption of self-service technologies : a study of the benefits and risks of self-service technologies and trust beliefs of service providers

Abstract

Self-service technologies (SSTs) are largely introduced and promoted to replace traditional service encounters and researchers have been investigating the influencers of SST adoption. This paper incorporates the fresh perspective of customer perceived value and trust beliefs of service provider with technology acceptance model and then proposes a conceptual model. An empirical study is conducted to test the model and study the SST adoption in digital post service context. Six benefits and seven risks of digital post service are identified based on literature review and the characteristics of digital post service, and, together with the three trust dimensions, their influences on SST adoption are tested in the survey. The data collected in the survey is validated and analyzed to detect the relationships between benefits, risks, trust beliefs and SST adoption. Three benefits and two risks are proven to have significant influence on attitude toward using digital post service. Integrity of service provider is also found to positively influence consumers’ attitude. Besides, attitude toward using digital post service is a solid predictor of their intention to use the SST. Lastly the theoretical and managerial implications from the results are given as well as the suggestions for future research.