Academic researchers' absorptive capacity influence on collaborative technologies acceptance for research purpose: pilot study

Abstract

A wide variety of Collaborative Technologies (CT) emerged to facilitate the collaboration among peers. Despite the extensive literature of CT adoption in various contexts, a massive lack exists in CT adoption by academic researchers. Consequently, this study concerns the CT adoption by academic researchers. The study investigates how academic researchers' Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) impacts the acceptance of CT for research purpose. The authors have extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explain how academic researchers' ACAP of CT impacts the academic researchers' Behavioral Intention (BI) to accept those technologies for researching purpose. The extended model was empirically evaluated using a survey data collected from 72 researchers in the academic fields from a leading university in Malaysia. The quantitative analysis indicated that the researchers' differences represented by ACAP influence their behavioral intention towards CT acceptance. Except insignificant impacts of ACAP for understanding and ACAP for assimilating dimensions on Perceived Usefulness (PU), and ACAP for applying on Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU)