Social Acceptability: Effect of Social Determinants in Analyzing the Acceptability of Technological Systems

Theories and Methodologies
By Florence Terrade, Hélène Pasquier, Juliette Reerinck-Boulanger, Gérard Guingouain, Alain Somat
English

"Acceptance literature gives us many competing models (e.g., Technology Acceptance Model, The Motivational Model, the Model of PC Utilization, Unified Theory of Acceptance, and Use of Technology...) to underline how we can predict user acceptance of information technology. All these models find their origins in the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA, Ajzen &?Fishbein, 1975) and in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB, Ajzen, 1980) which are classical models for predicting new behavior. In the TPB and TRA, the most important predictor of behavior is behavioral intention. Intention is predicted by attitude, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms. We find all these determinants in acceptance models. In our opinion, the influence of norms is largely neglected. In fact, research often just considers the individual acceptance (e.g., utility and utilisability). The importance of norms or social context is now recognized in social psychology. In this paper, we try to underline how norms and social context can contribute to knowledge about user acceptance of technology. Our project aims to bring a psychosocial contribution to the issue of acceptance. According to Doise (1982), when studying an object, social psychology research might follow four levels of analyses: 1) the intra-individual level (explaining behavior in terms of how people organize knowledge and experiences in their mind);? 2) the inter-individual level (explanation of behavior in terms of social relationships); 3) "positional" level (explanations are found in social status); and 4) ideological level (understanding behavior in terms of culture, social values). We think that in order to predict the use of technology, we should consider all these levels. "

Keywords

  • Social acceptability
  • Norms
  • Social context
  • New technology
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