Identifying the factors affecting the acceptance of technology in the municipality using the method of grounded theory

  Introduction

Following the introduction of the concept of smart city, a wide range of organizations have sought to develop the application of new technologies in urban management and planning. Numerous research projects have been conducted to identify the aspects of acceptance and application of technology. However, very few have studied technology acceptance at an organizational level. Among the research projects focused on effective factors in technology acceptance at an organizational level, very few have been concerned with the effective aspects of technology acceptance in non-governmental organizations in developing countries. Therefore, such aspects have not been identified precisely for the municipality as a non-governmental organization in Iran. This can make it difficult to apply technology in the municipality or even cause such efforts to fail. Therefore, it seems necessary to conduct a comprehensive study in the area.

The review of the literature reveals that technology acceptance has been proposed in various fields such as many areas of human behavior. The most important theories in the area of technology acceptance include the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), with over 67300 citations, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003), with over 23870 citations, the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975), with over 52450 citations, the diffusion of innovations theory (Rogers, 1983), with over 100700 citations, and the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989), with over 43980 citations in Google Scholar. Each of these theories represents a number of constructs that are important in the measurement of user intention about technology acceptance.Two research categories are identified here: studies on technology acceptance at the micro level, such as those focused on private organizations, and studies on technology acceptance at the macro level, such as those concerning e-governments or public organizations. The latter group investigate citizens’ acceptance of e-governments regardless of the organizational level and managers’ viewpoints. Based on the above theories, this group of studies seek to specify e-government acceptance by modeling user behavior. This paper proposed a citizen-based conceptual model of e-government acceptance for developing countries, seeking to identify the effectiveness of constructs on technology acceptance in a public organization, namely Isfahan Municipality.MethodologyThe objective of this research was to identify the factors effective on technology acceptance in the Isfahan municipality as a non-governmental organization. Given the subject of the research and the population, the grounded theory was used, which is one of the most efficient choices in qualitative research. For this purpose, a semi-structured questionnaire was designed based on the review of the literature and used for interviewing managers and senior experts in the Isfahan municipality. The grounded theory was extracted directly from data collected systematically during the research process and analyzed. In this method, the collected and analyzed data and the final theory are closely interrelated. Moreover, the analysis involves a confrontation between the researcher’s mind and the data. The purpose of this analytical method is to organize the data in specific categories based on their characteristics and dimensions and then to describe each of the categories. The results of the interviews were recorded as textual data using the Atlas.ti software, and were analyzed using the method of finite element analysis. Coding methods were employed to identify the effective categories and dimensions and their interrelations. 

The context in which a technology is to be used, including the social, cultural, and political characteristics of the society, has an important role in the extent to which the technology gains acceptance. Another effective factor is the cooperation and participation of organizations and their ways of thinking and performance in that regard. It should be noted that these dimensions have indirect as well as direct effects on decision-making for technology acceptance, applied through moderating constructs. The results of this study demonstrated that 23 categories were effective on technology acceptance in the Isfahan municipality, which could be classified further into eight major groups. These include the background, causative, technical, encouraging, deterrent, moderating, decision-making, and consequential categories.The findings also indicated that the constructs proposed in this research were significantly different from those introduced in previous research. This could be due to two fundamental differences between this study and previous ones. Firstly, the present research examined the constructs of technology acceptance at the level of the organization, which involved different dimensions from those concerning the acceptance of technology at an individual level. Secondly, there were fundamental differences between the areas in which the data were compiled in the sample tests. In other words, this research was conducted in the context of the technical, cultural, political, economic, and social infrastructures of developing countries, leading to different user attitudes and views from those concerning developed countries. 

This paper aimed to generate a conceptual model to increase urban service technology acceptance in organizations by modeling the constructs affecting managers and experts in the municipality. It clarified the relationships among these constructs. Identification of these constructs and their relationships can be useful in the attempts to correct the process of technology acceptance in organizations, especially public ones. The results of this study are particularly important to managers, urban planners, and researchers studying technology acceptance with a smart city approach. The findings can facilitate the process of developing smart cities with a focus on municipalities. Moreover, the constructs presented in this research can be tested using quantitative methods in future research projects.AcknowledgmentThis article was extracted from a PhD thesis on urban planning entitled A Novel Framework for Urban Service Technology Adoption According to the Smart City Approach: Case Study of the Urban Service Technology in the Isfahan Municipality, defended by the first author under supervision of the second and third authors in the Art University of Isfahan.