Herd Behavior in Technology Adoption: The Role of Adopter and Adopted Characteristics

Herd literature suggests that people tend to discount their own beliefs and imitate others when making adoption decisions. However different people based on their characteristics exhibit different degrees of herd behavior. In the same vein, the characteristics of technology must fit with the requirements of the task that an adopter wants to fulfill Characteristics of individuals and of the technology-to-be-adopted both influence adoption behaviors. It is important to understand these phenomena because they are strongly related to the staying power of technology. A research model is developed to study the influence adopter characteristics and technology characteristics. An online experiment will be conducted to examine the research model.