Bifurcated Model of DSS Adoption in Cambodia: Awareness-Adoption Gap (Dr. Khairul HAFIZ)

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are widely promoted as enablers of data-driven decision-making, yet their adoption in developing-country contexts remains uneven and insufficiently explained. This study examines DSS adoption in Cambodia using an exploratory mixed-methods design (N=42), combining survey data with correlation and regression analyses within a bifurcated analytical framework. The findings reveal a persistent awareness–adoption gap. While a majority of respondents report moderate to high familiarity with DSS concepts (78.6%), organizational deployment remains limited, with only 11.9% reporting enterprise-wide implementation. Regression results indicate that individual familiarity is positively associated with basic usage (β = 0.54, p < 0.01), whereas organizational factors, particularly deployment capacity and leadership support, emerge as the dominant predictors of sustained adoption when modeled jointly with individual factors (β ≈ 0.45, p < 0.01). Institutional pressures exert no significant direct effect when organizational readiness is controlled, suggesting an indirect influence. The study proposes a bifurcated adoption model that distinguishes between individual-level and organizational-level pathways in emerging economies. The findings indicate that DSS adoption in Cambodia is primarily constrained by structural conditions rather than cognitive barriers. This contributes to information systems research in developing-country contexts by refining technology adoption theory and highlighting the limits of perception-based models in resource-constrained environments.