Examining technology acceptance by individual law enforcement officers: An exploratory study

Management of technology implementation has been a critical challenge to organizations, public or private. In particular, user acceptance is paramount to the ultimate success of a newly implemented technology in adopting organizations. This study examined acceptance of COPLINK, a suite of IT applications designed to support law enforcement officers' analyses of criminal activities. We developed a factor model that explains or predicts individual officers' acceptance decision-making and empirically tested this model using a survey study that involved more than 280 police officers. Overall, our model shows a reasonably good fit to officers' acceptance assessments and exhibits satisfactory explanatory power. Our analysis suggests a prominent core influence path from efficiency gain to perceived usefulness and then to intention to accept. Subjective norm also appears to have a significant effect on user acceptance through the mediation of perceived usefulness. Several managerial implications derived from our study findings are also discussed.