Journal Summary 5 : “Consumer Acceptance of RFID Technology:An Exploratory Study”

Nurul Farahin Mohd Shuhaimi

14370

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been a technology which has been used in numerous applications and has many interesting application which identifies as potential as a fundamental technology and have gain attention by both academicians and practitioners.

However, there are several issues rising up regarding this matter which require addressing to achieve its widespread acceptance by consumers. Example of RFID technology is the violation of personal information privacy in government sector.

Therefore, a study is proposed to investigate the factor that affect consumer acceptance on the RFID technology. A model is developed and tested on its theoretical framework of the critical factors that affect the consumer’s acceptance of RFID technology.  

The model contextualized the technology acceptance model (TAM) within the context of the technology. The research model proposes that convenience, culture, privacy, regulation, and security are the principal factors influencing the consumers’ acceptance of RFID.

There are several hypotheses that have been proposed based on the previous studies.

Hypothesis 1: Convenience perceived of using RFID technology has a significant positive influence on consumer intention to use this technology.

Hypothesis 2: The influence of culture on perceptions about RFID technology has a significant bearing on the intention to use RFID technology by the members of that culture.

Hypothesis 3a: The higher the perceived importance of personal privacy, the lower the intention to use RFID technology.

Hypothesis 3b: The less willing the consumer is to sacrifice personal privacy, the lower their intention to use RFID technology.

Hypothesis 4: The consumers’ perception of regulatory protections associated with RFID technology is positively associated with their intention to use RFID technology.

Hypothesis 5a: The higher the perceived importance of personal information security, the lower the intention to use RFID technology.

Hypothesis 5b: The less willing consumers are to sacrifice their personal information security, the lower their intention to use RFID technology.

To support the result, a survey was conducted in the study to investigate the factor that affects consumer acceptance on RFID technology. The survey approximately suggested the responder, 10 minutes to fill out the survey and the people aged below 18 are not allowed filling out the survey. The responses are based on seven-point Likert scale anchored between 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree).

A review and pilot test was conducted in this study to ensure that none of the items were ambiguous and that the items adequately captured the domain of interest.

In addition, an online survey method was used also conducted in “websurveyor” and the link was e-mailed to the prospective respondents.

250 responded for the survey. It represents 83.4% response rate. The responses are check for any early-versus-late response bias and two tests were conducted which are Independent sample t-tests were used to test for such bias in the data and t-tests using SPSS showed the absence of early-versus-late response bias.

The result of shows and the reliability of the factors were checked using Cronbach’s alpha. Two analyses are used to test the proposed hypothesis.

First is regression analysis which is a statistical tool concerned which evaluate the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables.

For regression analysis, Intention was used as dependent variable, and Convenience, Culture, PrivacyIMP, PrivacyWTS, Regulation, SecurityIMP, and SecurityWTS as independen variables. The runs test, Levene’s test and Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests were conducted to test for randomness, constancy of variance, and normality, respectively.

The results of multiple regression analysis show that Convenience, Culture, SecurityIMP, and SecurityWTS are significant predictors of intention to use RFID technology. These findings support four hypotheses (H1, H2, H5a, and H5b). The results also show insufficient evidence for support of three hypotheses (H3a, H3b, and H4), suggesting that PrivacyIMP, PrivacyWTS, and Regulation play insignificant roles in predicting the intention to use RFID technology in the presence of the other variables.

Second analysis is discriminant analysis and a model was developed to show the underlying differences between the consumers who have higher intention to use RFID and those who have lower intention to use RFID. A discriminant analysis was then conducted with these clusters as the dependent variables and the summated scores of Convenience, Culture, PrivacyIMP, PrivacyWTS, Regulation, SecurityIMP, and SecurityWTS as the independent variables.

The result suggests that convenience, culture and security are important to know the acceptance of the consumer on the technology. However, privacy issue led to a factor that future implementation of RFID technology to be insignificant.

There are four explanations that support the findings.

First is the nature of how the RFID technology is used. RFID technology might threaten the privacy of the consumer therefore as they have the awareness and realized of the issues, consumer will have a better view on the possible threats of the RFID technology.

Second is consumer pay less attention to the issues although realizing the potential privacy threats of the technology. The consumer see that benefits of the technology is greater that the potential privacy threat.

Thirdly is the pervasive and ubiquitous nature of technology. The technology nowadays may influences the perception of the people on the privacy issues therefore people are more pervasive the positive influence of technology on people, the less the issue of personal privacy arises.

Last but not least is different reaction on the privacy issues. Different respondents may have different perception regarding their own privacy and the notion of privacy.

To sum up, convenience, culture’s influence and security perceived are the factors that affect the consumer’s acceptance on the RFID technology.

However there are several limitations of the study which involves the sample, the student which shows the limitations on the generalizability of the study.  Therefore, future research should test and validate the model by collecting data from a different composition of subjects.

Besides that, another issue is several of the constructs used in this study are in the developmental stage. 

RFID’s scientific research is not well-developed yet and just recently gained momentum therefore the scientific study on the acceptance of this technology are scarce.

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Reference
Hossain. M.M. & Prybutok. V.R., “Consumer Acceptance of RFID Technology:An Exploratory Study”, IEEE Transactions On Engineering Management, vol. 55, pp. 316-328, 2^nd May. 2008