Browsing by Subject "Diffusion of innovation"

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Bottom-up technology transmission within families : how children influence their parents in the adoption and use of digital media
(2012-12) Correa, Teresa; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero; Straubhaar, Joseph D.
This dissertation investigated the bottom-up technology transmission process in a country with varied levels of technology diffusion, such as Chile. In particular, I explored how children act as technology brokers within their families by influencing their parents' adoption of and learning about digital media, so as to include older generations in the digital environment. In order to do this, I measured to what extent this process occurs, I proposed a typology of factors that intervene in the process and analyzed the outcomes variables related to the phenomenon. Methodologically, I used a mixed-methods research approach by combining in-depth interviews with a self-administered paper-and-pencil survey taken by dyads of one parent and one child. I analyzed 28 interviews involving one 12 to 18-year-old child and one parent or legal guardian (14 dyads) stratified by socioeconomic background, age, and gender. In addition, I conducted the parent-child survey among school-aged children and their parents in three schools, stratified by socioeconomic status. One class per cohort from 7th to 11th grades was randomly surveyed. In total, 381 students and 251 parents completed the surveys. The analyses showed that bottom-up technology transmission occurs at some degree for all the technologies investigated in this study. However, children's influence should not be overstated because they play only one part among a number of factors involved in the digital inclusion of older generations. It also established a typology of factors related to the process at different levels, including structural influences, family structure, strategies employed by youth, and psychological dispositions of parents. Specifically, the analyses consistently found that this process was more likely to occur among people from a lower socioeconomic status. Also, the transmission was associated with more fluid parent-child interactions and occurred among parents who perceived the technology to be useful. Regarding the outcome variables, it demonstrated that this phenomenon is linked, although weakly, to greater levels of perceived competence among parents and higher esteem among young people. Finally, it suggested that bottom-up technology transmission is associated with the reduction of some socioeconomic gaps in digital media use.
Building an innovation discontinuance model : the case of twitter
(2018-05-03) Ng, Yee Man; Chyi, Hsiang Iris, 1971-; Chen, Gina; Johnson, Thomas; Liang , Hai; Murthy, Dhiraj
This dissertation seeks to extend Everett Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations theory by examining social media users’ post-adoption behavior. Despite the rapid growth of social networking sites (SNSs), the rate of user discontinuance is staggering. Keeping users active and engaged has always been a crucial issue for SNSs. Prior diffusion research has largely focused on innovation adoption, whereas innovation discontinuance is overlooked. However, innovation discontinuance is a vital facet of the diffusion process. In the real world, only a few innovations become institutionalized while most end up being fads that most users discontinue quickly. While early studies approached discontinuance as a one-time, complete abandonment of an innovation, this study extends the concept by examining two types of discontinuance: intermittent and permanent. Intermittent discontinuers are users who leave an innovation for a break but resume the use at a later time; permanent discontinuers are those who have no intentions to return. This study takes a mixed-methods approach—combining a user survey with computational analyses of “big data” drawn from Twitter—to explore the differences between intermittent and permanent discontinuers in three dimensions: (1) their distinctive characteristics (demographic, behavioral, and psychographic), (2) reasons for discontinuance, and (3) decision processes. The concept of intermittent discontinuance leads to the development of a new post-adoption decision-making model, which accounts for discontinuers’ planned and unplanned readoption behavior. This cyclical, multi-stage model also provides a systematic framework to compare the behavior and cognitive reasoning between intermittent and permanent discontinuers at each phase of the post-adoption cycle. While prior studies employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods to examine discontinuance, few came up with clear and reliable ways to measure the timeframe of discontinuance and users’ reasons for discontinuance. To address the arbitrariness of determining what length of inactivity constitutes intermittent and permanent discontinuance, this study introduces a mathematical approach based on an innovation’s life cycle and its user base. To examine users’ reasons for discontinuance, this study refines and expands Rogers and Shoemaker’s replacement-disenchantment typology—by factors and by discontinuance typologies. While Rogers conceptualized the innovation-diffusion process as an uncertainty reduction process, this study suggests that post-adoption decision-making process is a disturbance-coping mechanism—a temporal settlement of the constant interplay between an innovation’s utilitarian performance and social media exhaustion. Intermittent discontinuance usually occurs due to information overloads. Permanent discontinuance tends to occur due to perceived innovation shortcomings and innovation replacement. This dissertation provides theoretical insights into the temporal instability of an innovation, and why and how an innovation is discarded or discredited. The findings contribute to an adequate comprehension of the entire innovation diffusion process, which also helps SNS providers develop tailor-made retention solutions to re-engage SNS users.