Title: Exploring the attitude formation process of individuals towards new technologies: the case of augmented reality

Authors: David Harborth; Heiko Kreuz

Addresses: Chair of Mobile Business and Multilateral Security, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany ' Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Protiviti GmbH, Germany

Abstract: We examine how individuals assess augmented reality (AR) technologies and build attitudes towards them. Following a constructivist grounded theory method, we find that individuals do not assess the functionalities of AR technologies in absolute terms, but based upon the perceived benefits, limitations and concerns of other existing technologies. Consequently, individuals evaluate to what degree certain individually chosen technologies are equivalent to AR. By generalising this process and combining these insights with knowledge about attitudes from the literature, we develop the extended attitude formation theory (EAFT) representing the synopsis of this cognitive process. Our results contribute to theory by providing a new perspective on how attitudes towards innovative and somewhat unknown technologies are formed by individuals under a high level of uncertainty and therefore, overcome certain weaknesses of existing theories - like the technology acceptance model (TAM) which until now failed to explain users' attitudes in cases of new technologies.

Keywords: augmented reality; perceptual equivalence; attitude formation; grounded theory; anchoring.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTMKT.2020.110128

International Journal of Technology Marketing, 2020 Vol.14 No.2, pp.125 - 153

Received: 16 Jun 2019
Accepted: 24 Nov 2019
Published online: 06 Oct 2020 *

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