Dispositional resistance to change and social network site adopters' and non-adopters' attitudinal beliefs - an empirical analysis

Using the Model of Adoption of Technology in Households (MATH) (Venkatesh and Brown 2001, Brown and Venkatesh 2005), this research investigates the impact of dispositional resistance to change on Social Network Site (SNS) adopters’ and non-adopter’s attitudinal beliefs in order to explain, why individuals resist using Facebook. Therefore, the study is based on psychology research and adapts a personality perspective to explain user resistance. Dispositional resistance captures an individual’s inclination to react to change with resistance and is based on four dimensions named routine seeking, short-term focus, emotional reaction, and cognitive rigidity (Oreg 2003). By conducting an empirical study, the influences of the four resistance dimensions on individuals’ attitudinal beliefs are analyzed within the MATH. The influence is investigated for adopters, actual non-adopters and long-term non-adopters in a separate way. The results indicate significant relations between the dispositional resistance to change and individuals’ attitudinal beliefs, which vary for the analyzed groups. The same holds true for the R2, as the four resistance dimensions explain up to 54 percent of the variance of individuals’ attitudinal beliefs.