IT Identity: A Measure and Empirical Investigation of its Utility to IS Research
In a paper in the Journal of the AIS, our team develops a measure of IT identity.
Because use is the critical link between information technology (IT) investments and organizational performance, IS researchers have focused attention on post-adoption – after organizational IT are installed and used by employees in their work. To that end, recent theoretical work introduced IT identity – representing the strength of individuals’ self-identification with an IT – as a means to explain richer, post-adoption, IT use behaviors. Utilizing multiple methods and surveys, and focused on use of two different technologies, this study develops theory-based measures to establish IT identity’s utility for expanding understanding of post-adoption use. Results show IT identity predicts different IT use behaviors and richer forms of use. Further, IT identity maintains its predictive validity when embedded in a model with other predictors. Given the importance of such value-creating behaviors in today’s multi-functional-platform based IT environments, our findings suggest future research consider IT identity an instrumental part of models seeking to explain IT use in post-adoption contexts.
This paper is co-authored with Michelle Carter (Washington State University), Stacie Petter (Baylor University), and Varun Grover (University of Arkansas).
Recommended Citation: Carter, M., Petter, S. Grover, V. and Thatcher, J.B. (2020). “IT Identity: A Measure and Empirical Investigation of its Utility to IS Research.” Journal of the AIS. 21(5):2.
https://doi.org/10.17705/1jais.00638