A case study of information technology acceptance in the Saudi Arabian architecture, engineering and construction industry

There are significant attempts to embrace technology within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. However, the fast-technological advancements in recent years have made it difficult for businesses in the AEC industry to stay updated with the latest technology. Moreover, it is well known that the AEC industry is arguably behind other industries with respect to sustainability, quality, efficiency, and productivity. Adoption of Information Technology (IT) in other industries has increased efficiency and productivity when compared to the AEC industry. Additionally, IT benefits owners, developers, architects, engineers and other stakeholders in retrieving required information and identifies office dimensions by providing virtual scenes of sites etc. The AEC industry's acceptance of IT is limited however, causing a problem well-documented by many researchers in the field. Furthermore, though not evident from recent research due to the lack of such in the area, the available academic research shows that IT acceptance in the Saudi Arabian AEC industry in particular, is limited when compared to other AEC industries in more developed countries. Therefore, the aim of the current research is to develop a technology acceptance framework for the Saudi Arabian AEC industry to understand why it is behind in regards to IT acceptance. To do so, qualitative interviews with professional members of the AEC industry from Saudi Arabia were conducted. Their feedback supported the research's understanding concerning IT use, stakeholder behaviour, and IT perception within the industry's companies. Hence, the results helped highlight possible factors that may impact upon IT acceptance in the selected AEC case environment. Results from the interviews and adoption of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) as the foundation of this research formed a proposal of factors that should be considered with regards to IT use within the Saudi Arabian AEC industry as there may be possible further influential factors to the UTAUT: Anxiety, culture at the individual level, stakeholder role, size of the company, information type and computer self-efficacy. Furthermore, to validate the proposed framework (AEC acceptance framework), the research adopted an expanded UTAUT model and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) techniques were used to assess the model quantitively. The analysis results showed that both professionals' behavioural intentions and attitudes towards using IT are affected by performance expectancy, social influence, anxiety and self-efficacy. Additionally, power distance, long-term orientation, masculinity / femininity, gender and company size moderated the effect of the influence of those factors. Hence, this research's main contribution is the AEC technology framework which explains the factors that affect information technology acceptance in the Saudi Arabian AEC industry.