Investigating the Role of Gender as a Moderator in Influencing the Intention to Use and Actual Use of Mobile Telephony

This paper has extended the original Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model through usage space dimensions to investigate the role of Gender in influencing the Intention to use and Actual Usage of Mobile Telephony. A framework based on Usage Space dimensions was developed by reviewing literature and then validating it in the context of Intention to Use and Actual Usage of Mobile telephony. The framework empirically examined the influence of gender as a moderator on the four determinants of the UTAUT model on the Intention to Use and examined for gendered differences in the causality between Intention to Use and Actual Usage among 417 responses. The framework was validated by using Structural Equation Modelling. Among the four determinants considered in the UTAUT model, the influence of gender as a moderator was found in the case of Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE) and Facilitating Conditions (FC). Gender as a moderator did not influence the Intention to Use for Social Influence (SI). Gender as a moderator had a very small positive influence, more for men than for women in the case of Actual Usage (AU). The Intention to Use was found to have two distinct use patterns: InterIntention to Use (use for world outside) and IntraIntention to Use (use for self). While the analysis here reinforces Amity International Business School, Amity University, Noida, India Amity Institute of Social Sciences, Amity University,