Perceptive Users with Attitudes - Some Hueristics on Theorizing

Abstract

Many existing theories of user perceptions and attitudes towards technology suffer from “over investigation” of users’ attitudes and “under investigation” of the technologies that cause them. This can be the result of a pursuit of generalisability at the expense of accuracy and salience to practice. In this paper, we offer some heuristics for addressing this issue. We propose that salient features of technologies can be identified using affordance theory. The functional affordances of technologies form the basis for users’ descriptive beliefs (perceptions). These in turn form the basis for more generalized beliefs that lead to attitudes. We further suggest that multi-indicator structural models (MISMs), from contemporary psychometrics are highly suitable for modeling this theory area. We offer a brief illustration of how our heuristics could be used to develop a theory