Predicting Determinants and Moderating Factors of Mobile Phone Data Flow Service Adoption

With the development of economic and information technology, more and more people use mobile phone to surf the internet. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors of mobile phone data flow service adoption. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is used as a theoretical framework, and survey data are collected from 537 Chinese nationals. The results from structural equation modeling confirm that effort expectancy and social influence significantly affect behavior intention to use mobile phone data flow service. However, there are two counterintuitive findings: performance expectancy is not the key factor in mobile phone data flow service adoption, and facilitating condition significantly affects effort expectancy to behavior intention. In addition, the moderating effects of gender, age, and education level on these UTAUT relationships were tested by the regression model. The results indicate that age has the positive moderating effect when facilitating condition affects effort expectancy, and education level has the positive moderating effect when social influence affects behavior intention toward using mobile phone data flow service, while gender does not register as significant. This research not only proposes theoretical understanding of mobile phone data flow service adoption behaviors, but also offers practical marketing implications for mobile network operators.