Testing the technology acceptance model across cultures: A three country study

In recent years, the technology acceptance model (TAM) has been widely used by IS researchers in order to gain a better understanding of the adoption and use of information systems. While TAM has been widely applied and tested in North America, there have been no attempts to extend this work to other regions of the world. Given the globalization of business and systems, there is a pressing need to understand whether TAM applies in other cultures. This study compares the TAM model across three different countries: Japan; Switzerland; and the United States. The study was conducted by administering the same instrument to employees of three different airlines, all of whom had access to the same information technology innovation, in this case, E-mail. The results indicate that TAM holds for both the U.S. and Switzerland, but not for Japan, suggesting that the model may not predict technology use across all cultures. The implications of these findings are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.