Residents’ acceptance of mobile application in private residential sector in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study investigates the determining factors of residents’ behavioural intention and use behaviour to the adoption of estate mobile applications for property management services in the private residential sector in Hong Kong based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model by examining the core constructs of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions from the model. Questions were carefully designed to conduct the questionnaire survey by face-to-face and by online survey platform for measurement of those core UTAUT constructs, and the survey successfully collected quantitative data from 136 no. of respondents residing in private residential sector in Hong Kong with experience of using estate mobile application for property management services. The proposed model with quantitative data collected was analyzed by Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Results of the study revealed that the core UTAUT constructs of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence showed positive correlations with residents’ behavioural intention of using the estate mobile application; while facilitating conditions and behavioural intention positively correlated with the residents’ actual use behaviour to the adoption of estate mobile application. Findings from the study showed the strongest predicting power of social influence to behavioural intention, at the same time facilitating conditions having the strongest predicting power to the use behaviour. Therefore, the results provided insights of how to improve the attraction to residents for both intentional and actual use of estate mobile applications for property management services by strategically working on the enhancement of services of estate mobile application associated with the aspects of social influence and facilitating conditions. At last, the study concluded by providing practical implications for property management companies to refine the development directions of estate mobile application, and the study also brought about valuable theoretical contributions for scholars to continue the study on the acceptance of estate mobile applications under a more in-depth framework of study in the future.