The complexity of different types of attitudes in initial and continued ICT use

In the information systems (IS) field, research interest in attitude has fluctuated over the past decades given the inconsistent and inconclusive findings on attitudeʹs effects on behavioral intention (BI) to use information and communication technology (ICT). This study addresses the conceptual, operational, and temporal dynamics of attitude that may have caused the inconsistent and inconclusive results. A longitudinal study was conducted to validate our hypotheses. The results show that: (a) The attitude that significantly influences BI needs to be at a particular specificity with BI on two aspects, the same evaluation target and the same evaluation time, where the time specificity can supersede the target specificity; (b) the relationships among attitudes and intention remain the same if they are measured at the same time, regardless of use stages; (c) the two types of attitudes show different long-lasting effects over time; (d) omitting important mediating factors in a research model may generate misleading messages; and (e) attitudes alone can explain a large amount of variances in BI. The results can help explain the reasons behind inconsistent findings in the literature, inspire additional research efforts, and suggest bringing attitudes back to information systems research due to their theoretical and practical importance.