Mobile Data Services Usage: An In Depth Investigation Of The Influence Of The "Personal Layer" Of Place

The new mobile networked environments ask for more investigation in order to explain users’ behaviour and users’ low demand for mobile data services. A field study, conducted in the territory of Greece, researched the use of a specific mobile data services platform, called here as Service A trying to identify how users experience place before deciding to use mobile data services. The findings of the research tend to suggest that participants did experience the different places in a similar way before deciding to use mobile data services. The study adopted the humanistic geographical perspective as represented by the four “layers of place” introduced by Yi-Fu Tuan’s theory. The findings presented in this specific paper highlight the strongest patterns coming from the analysis of the “Personal layer” of place as represented by Tuan that are important influential elements in the decision of the users to start using mobile data services . The contribution of this paper is that it argues that the users’ decision to start using mobile data services is influenced and triggered by their interaction with their surrounding environment and thus there is need to consider the role of this environment in the study of adoption and use of mobile data services.