Development of a survey instrument to investigate household broadband adoption

This paper discusses the initial development of a survey instrument designed to investigate the range of factors affecting broadband adoption in Australia. The development of these constructs builds on existing technology adoption models, innovation diffusion theory and psychology studies related to consumer choice and qualitative research by the author. The survey instrument is designed to capture household consumers' perceptions between the persuasion phase and the decision phase of the innovation-decision process (Rogers 2003).Technology adoption studies in the information systems discipline have historically been dominated by models developed to study workplace adoption (e.g. TAM & UTAUT), which do not consider the role of the purchase process in the adoption decision. Recently Venkatesh and Brown have proposed the Model of Adoption of Technology in Households (2005) which looked at PC adoption is US households. Dwivedi, Choudrie and Brinkman (2006) have specifically looked at the development of a survey instrument to study broadband adoption and perceptions of service quality in the UK.While Adams (2006a) found support for many of the constructs in the TAM, UTAUT and MATH models, key themes emerged which were not described by the existing models. Support was found for the concept of purchase complexity playing an influential role in consumers being confident in making a purchase decision.This paper describes the development of survey constructs designed to capture consumers' motivations for installing a broadband Internet connection in their homes. Broadband adoption has become a hot political topic in Australia in the last 12 months with the Federal Government, Telstra, the ACCC and the Federal Opposition all taking strong public positions on the issue. The development of a reliable instrument to capture household consumers' motivations for installing a broadband Internet connection is an important building block for gathering baseline data tinform public debate on broadband policy.