The Impact of IT Equivocality on Postadoptive Use Behaviors: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Construct

In his early work, Karl Weick referred to information technology (IT) as “equivoques” to underline the conflicting interpretations that often arise among users, groups, and organizations interacting with IT. As modern IT systems support a growing variety of uses and applications, this phenomenon intensifies, with important implications for attitude formation and use behaviors. Based on individual sensemaking theory, we define perceived IT equivocality as a user’s difficulty in making sense of an IT and theorize that this psychological phenomenon manifests through perceptions of incompleteness, fragmentation, and uncertainty. Three empirical studies (n = 419, n = 411, n = 345) were conducted to validate this multidimensional construct and examine its relevance in postadoptive use settings. The results indicate that perceived IT equivocality is negatively associated with routine and innovative use and positively associated with behavioral anxiety, confirming its theorized influence on usage patterns. In closing, we discuss the importance of the IT equivocality construct to both theory and practice, along with the limitations of our work. Our distinctive contributions include 1) conceptualizing an IS-specific psychological phenomenon, 2) developing and validating a multidimensional scale, and 3) demonstrating the behavioral potency of the construct.