Unified Theory (UTAUT)

  • Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)
  • Developed by Venkatesh et al. in 2003
  • Attempt to create one single model which integrates the quintessence of eight previous innovation acceptance theories.
  • Is aimed at providing an holistic insight into all factors, which have an influence on the behavioural intention towards the use of a new technology.

The various factors which build our intentions and lead to behaviour

UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003)

According to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology there are four key constructs:

  1. Expectation of performance
  2. Expectation of effort
  3. Social influence
  4. Facilitating conditions

The first three are direct determinants of the intention to use new technology. The factor facilitating conditions is a direct determinant of user behaviour.

Factors of gender, age, experience, and voluntary use are considered to moderate the impact of the four key constructs.

UTAUT 2

  • Developd by Venkatesh et.al. as an extension of the original Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 
  • Includes also external social factors that influence the behavioural intention to use new technology.

Venkatesh et.al. extended the original UTAUT model by incorporating the following factors which improved the prediction of  behavioural intention and use behaviour:

  • Hedonic motivation
  • Price value
  • Habit
  • Voluntariness of use

Criticism of UTAUT:

  • Very complex model due to the multitude of contructs.
  • So far only a limited body of research has applied UTAUT and UTAUT2 in its pure form. While UTAUT has been empirically tested and performed significantly better than the individual models in some contexts, its advantage over the traditional models can not yet be confirmed.

Advantages of UTAUT:

  • Due to the multitude of factors it delivers the highest explanatory power of all standard acceptance models and thus helps to support the technology development process.

Field of Application:

  • While originally developed for an organizational application, the model has a broad applicability to the acceptance decisions of new technologies in general.

To learn more about UTAUT, visit the sources below:

Venkatesh, V., Morris, M., Davis, G., & Davis, F. (2003). User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View. MIS Quarterly

Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y., & Xu, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. MIS quarterly, 36(1), 157-178.