The Impact of IT Equivocality on Postadoptive Use Behaviors: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Construct

In his early work, Karl Weick referred to information technology (IT) as "equivoques" to underline the conflicting interpretations that often arise among users, groups, and organizations interacting with IT systems. As modern IT systems support a growing variety of uses and applications, this phenomenon intensifies, with important implications for attitude formation and usage patterns. Based on individual sensemaking theory, we define perceived IT equivocality as a cognitive state characterized by a user's difficulty in making sense of an IT. This manifests through perceptions of incompleteness, fragmentation, and uncertainty. Through three empirical studies (n = 419, n = 411, n = 345), we validate this multidimensional construct and examine its relevance in three different post-adoptive use contexts. The results indicate that perceived IT equivocality is negatively associated with routine and innovative use, but positively associated with behavioral anxiety, confirming the theorized influence of IT equivocality on usage patterns. In closing, we discuss the importance of the IT equivocality construct to both theory and practice, along with the limitations of our work. Our distinctive contributions include 1) conceptualizing an ISspecific psychological phenomenon, 2) developing and validating a measurement instrument, and 3) demonstrating the behavioral potency of the construct.