The Role of Dispositional Resistance to Change in Post-Adoption Use of Learning Management Systems

The influence of personality-based behavioral inhibitors on students’ attitudes toward Learning Management Systems remains underexplored. Drawing on norm theory and status quo bias, this study develops a theoretical model to examine whether dispositional resistance to change influences students’ post-adoption attitudes toward using a Learning Management System and how perceptions of system attributes – convenience and ease of use – moderate this relationship. The research model is tested with survey data collected from 220 university-student Google Classroom users in Thailand using PLS-SEM. A key finding is that resistance to change has a direct positive effect on students’ attitudes toward using Google Classroom and that this relationship is negatively moderated by both convenience and ease of use. For practitioners, these results suggest that increasing convenience and decreasing effort can reduce the influence of resistance to change on students’ attitudes, while training and technical support can lead to more favorable attitudes toward using new system features, thereby encouraging continuance behavior. This paper contributes by offering a new theoretical perspective and empirical evidence regarding the resistance to change–attitude relationship in the context of post-adoption use of Learning Management Systems, contrasting with findings in the broader technology acceptance literature. Overall, this study highlights the importance of personality-based inhibitors, such as dispositional resistance to change, in understanding post-adoption use of Learning Management Systems and offers theoretical and empirical insights for online learning research.