Page 79 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Maral Jamalova: Socıal Influence and Smartphone Adoptıon in Collectıvıstıc Country:
Evıdence from Azerbaıjan

The findings of the current research are especially influenced by the high education
level of female (as well as male) respondents and mean that the surveyed females
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2
enjoy using handsets much more than males (f male(0.061) < f female(0.085)). The gap
between genders decreases and enjoyment from handset use became usual.
Moreover, some studies report (Anshari et al., 2016) that females tend to use
handsets for keeping in touch with surrounding while males like gaming activities.

The results illustrate a significant relationship between social influence and habit
(H4: SI→ HT) in the case of surveyed Azeri young adults. Even if indicators are
partially different, the finding complies with the statement of Venkatesh (2012) as
well as some of the previous surveys (Ameen & Willis, 2018; Ameen et al., 2018) in
terms of effect size. The effect size of the relationship (SI → HT) in the male
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subsample is higher in comparison with the female subsample (f male(0.084) > f 2
female(0.071)). So, the habit of questioned Azeri respondents is influenced by their
social surrounding.

The findings illustrate that social surroundings cannot influence attitudes towards
handsets’ price-value between surveyed Azeri males and females (H5: SI→PV). It is
logical as social influence is only one of the sources for receiving information. The
socio-economic situation of the country (We Are Social & Hootsuite, 2019a) and
price-value ratio should be important for smartphone buyers/users too. It was
confirmed in previous studies (Jamalova, 2020) that price value is an essential
indicator influencing the behavioral intention of Azeri students, however, the source
of this information is not related to close surroundings.

By contrast, the hypothesis regarding the relationship between social influence and actual
use (H6: SI→USE) was partially accepted. This is the only hypothesis where results for
male and female subsamples differ. In the case of males’ social influence had a direct
positive impact on actual use. However, in the female subsample, there is no any
significant relationship between these variables. The results might be related to differences
in technology use between genders (Venkatesh & Morris, 2000). Excluding this pathway,
there is no significant difference between the decisions of males and females.

The relationship between habit and actual use was not investigated separately for
each subsample. As it was originally offered by Venkatesh et al. (2012), the direct
relationship was examined. There is a significant relationship between variables.
This result complies with UTAUT2, however, some studies reported the opposite
outcome (Ameen et al., 2018; Jamalova & Constantinovits, 2021). Considering the
characteristics of mentioned latent variables, this issue might require deeper
investigation (Limayem, Hirt, & Cheung, 2007).

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