Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Predicting m-commerce adoption determinants: A neural network approach

Alain Yee-Loong Chong
Nottingham University Business School China, University of Nottingham, Ningbo campus, 199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo 315100, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: M-commerce has continued to grow at an explosive rate. This purpose of this paper is to examine the
M-commerce predictors of m-commerce adoption by extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technol-
Technology adoption ogy (UTAUT) model. The extended model incorporates additional constructs such as perceived value,
Neural network trust, perceived enjoyment and personal innovativeness. A non-linear, non-compensatory model is devel-
Consumer behaviour
oped to understand the predictors of m-commerce adoptions. Online survey was used to collect data
UTAUT
from 140 Chinese users. Neural network analysis was used to predict m-commerce adoption, and the
model was compared with the results from regression analysis. The neural network model outperformed
the regression model in adoption prediction, and captured the non-linear relationships between predic-
tors such as perceived value, trust, perceived enjoyment, personal innovativeness, users demographic
profiles (e.g. age, gender and educational level), effort expectancy, performance expectancy, social
influence and facilitating conditions with m-commerce adoption. This study applied neural network to
provide further understanding of m-commerce adoption decisions based on a non-linear, non-
compensatory model. The UTAUT model was also extended to examine consumer information systems
such as m-commerce. The m-commerce study conducted in this research is in China, one of the fastest
growing m-commerce markets in the world.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is defined as the buying and
selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices.
M-commerce is one of the fastest growing technologies and busi-
nesses today. Driven by the lower cost of mobile devices and
improvement in wireless internet connections, m-commerce is
now seen as a business model that may transform business com-
munities and industries. The potential opportunities presented by
m-commerce are supported by the growth in the number of mobile
devices, and in particular, mobile phones. Reports by International
Telecommunication Union stated that the number of mobile sub-
scribers reached 5 billion worldwide in 2010, and that there are
as many as 1.2 billion mobile web users worldwide (Chong, Chan,
& Ooi, 2011; Mobithinking.com, 2012). Companies such as Face-
book stated that they have 425 million mobile users as of Decem-
ber 2011, while Google received a revenue of US dollar 2.5 billion
from mobile advertising. These statistics are all evidence of m-
commerce’s growth and influence.
The potential of m-commerce is also gaining attention in many
developing countries. Although the biggest market for mobile pay-
ment is currently Japan, developing countries such as China are tou-
ted as the future of m-commerce due to their rapid market growth
and large number of mobile users (Mobithinking.com, 2012).
E-mail address: alain.chong@nottingham.edu.cn
Mobile applications such as WeiXin in China took a mere 433 days
to reach 100 million users (ChinaInternetWatch, 2012). Today,
China and India account for about 30 percent of the world’s mobile
subscription. However, the success of m-commerce is not a fore-
gone conclusion. Despite the potentials of m-commerce, there is a
growing concern that although the numbers of mobile subscribers
are increasing, actual m-commerce activities in many developing
countries remain low. This means that mobile consumers are only
using their mobile phones to surf the Internet, listen to music,
and the widespread usage of m-commerce, where consumers con-
duct transactions for goods or services using their mobile phone,
remains low (Chong et al., 2011). The eventual success of m-
commerce would depend on whether consumers use m-commerce
as a channel to conduct monetary transactions such as purchasing
or banking. Understanding consumers’ decisions to adopt m-com-
merce has gained the attentions of both the research and business
community due to m-commerce’s potentials. However, like most
information system adoption studies, it is often difficult to predict
the adoption behaviours of m-commerce consumers due to the
complexity and uncertainty involved in the decision makings.
Researches in the past have attempted to understand the factors
that influence consumers’ m-commerce adoption decisions (Wei,
Marthandan, Chong, Ooi, & Arumugam, 2009). One of the more
popular models adopted by researchers to understand m-com-
merce adoption decision is the Unified Theory of Acceptance and
Use of Technology (UTAUT). UTAUT unified existing technology
adoption models such as the Technology Acceptance Model

0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.07.068
524 A. Y.-L. Chong / Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530
(TAM) and Theory of Planned Behaviour, and proposed four key
constructs that will influence a person’s decision to adopt informa-
tion systems: performance expectancy, social influence, subjective
norm, and facilitating conditions (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, &
Davis, 2003). The application of UTAUT to understand m-
commerce adoption has been conducted by researchers such as
Min, Ji, and Qu (2008), Zhou, Lu, and Wang (2010) and Carlsson,
Carlsson, Hyvonen, Puhakainen, and Walden (2006). However, sev-
eral conclusions can be drawn from these existing studies and on
the UTAUT model. Firstly, UTAUT was originally developed to
examine the adoption of information systems based on the context
of organization information systems. However, m-commerce is dif-
ferent from organization information systems as it includes enter-
tainment activities such as mobile gaming, and it is also used by
consumers instead of employees of organizations. Secondly, due
to the characteristics of m-commerce, relevant adoption variables
such as trust, cost and the innovativeness of users have been ne-
glected by UTAUT. Thirdly, although past technology adoption
studies have used the term ‘‘prediction’’ in their study, Shumeli
and Koppius (2010) have stated that predictive studies are in fact
different from explanatory studies. Most explanatory information
systems adoption studies have employed statistical techniques
such as regression to examine the causal relationships between
the adoption factors and information systems studied. These causal
relationships study are forms of preferences regression which as-
sume that adoption decisions are linear compensatory (Chiang,
Zhang, & Zhou, 2006). Under such assumption, the shortfall in
one of the adoption decision such as perceived usefulness can be
compensated by improving another adoption factor such as per-
ceived ease of use (Chiang et al., 2006). However, when users of
information systems are making adoption decisions, it is not neces-
sary that the processes of evaluation are compensatory. An m-
commerce consumer for example, may decide not to adopt m-
commerce due to cost issues, and this may not be compensated
by m-commerce’s ease of use. This observation was conducted by
Chiang et al. (2006), who claimed that since linear statistical mod-
els are not able to capture the non-compensatory decision rules,
they are deemed unreliable. Venkatesh and Goyal (2010) also
argued that linear models tend to oversimplify the complexities in-
volved in information systems adoption decisions.
This research has several aims. Firstly, this research aims to
understand the important factors that can predict the adoption
of m-commerce based on extending the UTAUT model. The UTAUT
model is extended by adding additional variables such as perceived
value, consumers’ personal innovativeness, perceived enjoyment
and trust. Demographic variables such as consumers’ age, gender,
and education are also included in the study. Secondly, this re-
search aims to examine whether if non-linear, non-compensatory
decision model provides a better model fitting and forecasting than
linear models for predicting m-commerce adoption. To achieve
this, the results of the neural network will be compared with
regression analysis to determine which technique can predict the
adoption of m-commerce better, and this also answer the call by
Shumeli and Koppius (2010) to include predictive analytics tech-
niques in information systems researches. Lastly, this research
aims to examine m-commerce adoption in the context of the
Chinese consumer market, which is one of the largest and fastest
growing m-commerce market.
2. Previous research
2.1. M-commerce adoption studies
Previous technology adoption studies have based their research
model on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Theory of Planned
Behaviour (TPB) and UTAUT (Min et al., 2008; Wei et al., 2009).
Among the theories, TAM by Davis (1989) is one of the most highly
cited information system adoption model. TAM argues that a user’s
intention to adopt information systems is determined by his or her
perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the information
system. The perceived usefulness of the information system in turn
is influenced by its perceived ease of use. However, TAM has been
as regarded by researchers such as Barki (2007) to have its limita-
tions as it is too simple and over studied. TAM was also extended
by adding additional constructs such as social influence, facilitating
characteristics etc. to become the TAM2 (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000)
and TAM3 (Venkatesh & Bala, 2008).
Despite the extension on TAM, it is still being viewed by some
researchers to have some limitations (Min et al., 2008). TAM and
the TAM2 for instance, are able to explain only 40% of an informa-
tion system’s usage (Lu, Yao, & Yu, 2005). Studies by Jeyaraj,
Rottman, and Lacity (2006) and Lu et al. (2005) found that TAM
should be integrated into other broader models to improve their
predictive power. Researchers also believed that given the com-
plexity of behavioural research, a single model may not be able
to cover all or majority of the adoption factors. Thus each theory
such as TAM and TPB suffer from their own limitations and they
do not complement each other.
In order to address the limitation of TAM related studies,
Venkatesh et al. (2003) developed the UTAUT model. UTAUT was
developed based on a review of eight prominent information sys-
tem adoption model such as the Innovation Diffusion of Theory,
TAM, and TPB. UTAUT holds that four key constructs (performance
expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating
conditions) are direct determinants of usage intention and behav-
iour (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Performance expectancy is defined as
the degree to which an information system will provide benefit to
the users. Effort expectancy is the degree of ease associated with
the use of the information system. Social influence is the extent
to which the user perceives that the important others such as fam-
ily and friends believe they should use the information system.
Facilitating conditions is the users’ perceptions of the resources
as well as the support which they can receive when using the infor-
mation systems. UTAUT was able to explain 70% of the variance in
behavioural intention to use a technology by Venkatesh et al.
(2003). UTAUT is applied by researchers in the study of various
information system adoptions such as m-commerce (Min et al.,
2008), Mobile Banking (Zhou et al., 2010), E-commerce (Uzoka,
2008). In many of these studies, the UTAUT was extended by incor-
porating additional variables that are suited to the context of the
information systems studied. For example, Min et al. (2008) ap-
plied variables such as trust and cost in studying m-commerce
adoption. For this research, the UTAUT was recommended to be ex-
tended for the study of m-commerce for several reasons. Firstly,
UTAUT was developed based on organizational information sys-
tems which have different characteristics with consumer based
information systems such as m-commerce. For example, m-com-
merce can offer entertainment such as mobile gaming. Secondly,
because m-commerce is conducted in a wireless environment,
consumers may be influenced by factors such as the security of
m-commerce. The next section discusses the extended UTAUT
model used in this research.
2.2. Extending UTAUT model
This research extended the UTAUT model by adding perceived
value, consumers’ personal innovativeness, perceived enjoyment
and trust.
Past researches from Ong, Poong, and Ng (2008), Xin (2004), and
Agarwal, Wang, Xu, and Poo (2007) have all found that price is one
of the main barriers for consumers to adopt 3G. Xin (2004) stated
that one reason why SMS is widely accepted by consumers is due
 A. Y.-L. Chong / Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530
to its low costs in allowing users to communicate with each other.
Although many m-commerce applications are freely available to
users, certain applications do require consumers’ purchase. Fur-
thermore, currently users need to use m-commerce via 3G connec-
tion and a mobile device such as smartphones. Thus unlike
organization information systems, consumers will need to bear
the financial cost of using m-commerce. Chong, Darmawan, Ooi,
and Lin (2010) stated that the cost factor is important as it looks
at whether consumers are willing to pay based on the variety of
services offered by m-commerce. Kim, Chan, and Gupta (2007) sta-
ted that the basic and common assumption in examining con-
sumer behaviour is value maximization. Thus consumers are only
willing to pay and adopt an information system if they believe that
the value offers by it far exceed their monetary sacrifices. This
study defined perceived value based on Kim et al. (2007)’s defini-
tion which is ‘‘the consumer’s overall perception of m-commerce
based on the considerations of its benefits and sacrifices needed
to acquire and/or use it’’.
Consumer’s personal innovativeness has been included in
UTAUT in Lu et al. (2005)’s study on wireless internet. Studies in
the past have found that individuals who are more innovative
are usually able to cope with high level of uncertainties, and are
therefore more likely to adopt new technologies (Lu et al., 2005;
Rogers, 1995). Agarwal and Prasad (1999) explained that personal
innovativeness is the willingness of a user to try out new informa-
tion systems, and this characteristic separates the adopter and
non-adopter of new technologies. Given that Chinese culture often
includes a certain degree of uncertainty avoidance (Zigang & Fan,
2004), it would be interesting to see if their personal innovative-
ness will play a role in their willingness to try out new technology
such as m-commerce.
Perceived enjoyment is an important factor in determining the
acceptance of consumer information systems (Thong, Hong, & Tam,
2006). M-commerce in particular, is different from organization
information systems and provides high level of entertainment to
consumers. An example of this can be seen in the rising popularity
of WeiXin, a location based mobile social networking tools which
allow users to share videos, music and messages. Consumers
who experienced enjoyment from using these applications are
more likely to adopt them (Kim et al., 2007). Related studies in-
clude those by Lu et al. (2005), Ha, Yoon, and Choi (2007) and
Teo (2001) who found that perceive enjoyment has a positive influ-
ence on the adoption of mobile games and the internet.
Trust examined in this research focused on the trust on m-com-
merce application providers. Consumers’ trust on the reputation,
security, and privacy of the providers will therefore be examined to
determine their influence on m-commerce adoption. Unlike e-
commerce, Chinese consumers have less experience with using
m-commerce to conduct transactional based activities. Furthermore,
personal information is usually stored on users’ mobile devices, and
the security and privacy risks in m-commerce can therefore be quite
high. Other issues resulting in users not trusting m-commerce suffi-
ciently to subscribe to it include the the lack of clear regulations,
face-to face interactions, and potential information that can be ac-
cessed by the vendors (Chong et al., 2010; Wei et al., 2009).
Demographic characteristics such as age, gender and educa-
tional level’s relationships with internet and mobile commerce
adoption have been examined by past researchers such as Chong
et al. (2011), Teo (2001), and Jackson, Ervin, Gardner, and Schmitt
(2001). Past beliefs such as males, or those with higher level or
educations and younger people being more likely to adopt infor-
mation systems have shown contradicting results (Chong et al.,
2011). This research therefore examines whether these character-
istics are able to predict m-commerce adoption, in particular when
using a non-linear and non-compensatory technique such as neu-
ral network.
525
2.3. Neural network
Neural network is defined by Haykin (2001) as a ‘‘massively
parallel distributed processor made up of simple processing units,
which have a natural propensity for storing experimental knowl-
edge and making it available for use’’. A neural network resembles
the human brain as it is able to acquire knowledge from its envi-
ronment through a learning process. The knowledge acquired is
stored by the interneuron connection strengths (also known as
synaptic weights) (Haykin, 2001). Although inspired by the func-
tion of the human neurological systems, they do not have anything
to do with the biological process (Sexton, Johnson, & Hignite,
2002). The neural network is able to apply the learning process
to modify the synaptic weights of the neural network in an orderly
manner to attain the desired design objective (Sexton et al., 2002).
Neural network model will usually be comprised of nodes or
neurons that are distributed in hierarchical layers. In general, neu-
ral networks will have three layers – input, hidden, and output (see
Fig. 1). Data will be received by the input layers, and the informa-
tion and conclusions will be generated in the output layers (Morris,
Greer, Hughes, & Clark, 2004). Each input will be given its own syn-
aptic weight (Bakar & Tahir, 2009). These weights will be trans-
ferred to the hidden layers which consist of several hidden
neurons. These values will be added through applied weights,
and converted into an output value by a nonlinear activation func-
tion. The results will then passed to the neurons in the layer below,
and provide a feed-forward path to the output layer (Sexton et al.,
2002). The weights of the connections will be adjusted through an
iterative training process when the training samples are used to
train the network. The knowledge obtained from the training will
then be stored for future predictive use.
Neural network offers several advantages compared to the tra-
ditional statistical methods. A neural network can be linear or non-
linear, which allows for the studying of non-compensatory deci-
sion processes. Unlike regression analysis, the input and output
mapping can also be accomplished without assuming any particu-
lar distribution for the sample population studied (Chiang et al.,
2006; Garson, 1998). Neural network has been found to have out-
performed traditional compensatory models such as logistic, mul-
tiple, and discriminant regression analyses (Chiang et al., 2006;
Garson, 1998). Although neural network has been applied to vari-
ous disciplines such as to economics (Kaastra & Boyd, 1996), con-
sumer choice (Chiang et al., 2006; Hu, Shanker, & Hung, 1999),
and customer loyalty (Hsu, Shih, Huang, Lin, & Lin, 2009), its appli-
cations to information systems research remain sparse (Scott &
Walczak, 2009; Shumeli and Koppius, 2010). Shmueli and Koppius
(2010) stated that by employing predictive analytic methods,
Fig. 1. Three layer network.
526 A. Y.-L. Chong / Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530

researchers are able to build empirical models for predicting new
and future observations. Shmueli and Koppius (2010) also claimed
that by employing predictive analytic techniques, the data-driven
nature of predictive analytics can be integrated with theoretical
knowledge throughout the entire model building and evaluation
process, but in a less formal way than in explanatory statistical
modelling.
Similar to studies such as Scott and Walczak (2009), Sexton
et al. (2002), and Morris et al. (2004), this study employs neural
network to predict the factors that influence consumers’ m-com-
merce adoption decisions. The results from the neural network will
then be compared to the ones obtained from multiple regression
analysis in order to determine which one offers better predictive
power.
3. Methodology
The methodology used in this research is similar to the sugges-
tion by Shmueli and Koppius (2010). Neural network will be the
main form of analysis in this research. However, multiple regres-
sion is employed to compare both the results from neural network
and regression analysis to check the performances between the
two approaches, and whether there are differences in determinants
predicting the adoption of m-commerce.
3.1. Data collection
A survey questionnaire was designed to explore the determi-
nants of m-commerce adoption. The survey was translated into
Chinese by a language instructor to ensure that the wording used
in the surveys were consistent. The survey questionnaire was
pre-tested with 20 m-commerce users, and 2 university professors,
whose main research area are in the field of e-commerce and inter-
net technologies. An online survey approach was used in this re-
search as it will ensure that users will not submit incomplete
survey, and that there is no duplication of submission from a single
respondent. These are achieved as the online survey does not allow
the submission of data using the same IP address and users cannot
submit survey with incomplete response. The survey link was dis-
tributed through various Chinese social media tools such as WeiX-
in, WeiBo, and RenRen. These social media tools are among the
most popular tools in China, and therefore will have a wider reach
to Chinese users. In total, 140 surveys were received online. The
sample size achieved the minimum requirement of 1 independent
variable to 10 sample (1:10) recommendation by Hair, Black,
Babin, and Anderson (2010).
3.2. Variables and measures
variables except the demographic varibles were measured on a 5
point Likert Scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly
agree). A total of 36 items were used to measure the predictors and
3 items were used to measure m-commerce adoption.
3.3. Scale reliability and factor analysis
Cronbach Alpha was applied to test reliability with the follow-
ing results: effort expectancy (0.950), performance expectancy
(0.949), social influence (0.825), facilitating conditions (0.890),
perceived enjoyment (0.888), personal innovativeness (0.931),
trust (0.930), perceived value (0.0.962). The reliability coefficients
for all the predictors are above 0.70, which concurs with the rec-
ommendations made by Hair et al. (2010).
As recommended by Shmueli and Koppius (2010), principle
component analysis was applied to determine how and to what ex-
tent the items are linked to their underlying factors (Chong et al.,
2010). Principle component analysis will identify if the selected
items cluster on one or more than one factor. Factor loadings are
applied to present these relations. Factor loadings greater than
0.30 are considered as significant; loadings of 0.40 are considered
as more important, while loadings which are greater than 0.50
are very significant. This research therefore employs factor loading
of 0.50 as the cut off point (Hair et al., 2010). Table 1 shows the re-
sults from principle component analysis.
As shown in the table, items had high factor loadings of greater
than 0.50 in their respective factors, therefore each construct is
valid.
3.4. Multiple regression analysis
Multiple regression is performed to determine the significant
predictors for m-commerce adoption. The purpose of conducting
multiple regression analysis is to allow us to compare the results
with neural network, and see if the non-linear, non-compensatory
model can perform better than multiple regression analysis. Table 2
provides the results from the analysis.
As shown in Table 2, given that all the VIF values are greater
than 0.1, and Tolerance values are less than 5, thus there is no mul-
ti-collinearity issue with the data. The R2 value for the model is
0.817, which is impressive and performs slightly better than the
original UTAUT model. The results showed that of all the 11 predic-
tors, only gender, trust and facilitating conditions are not signifi-
cant. Among the significant results, unlike UTAUT or the TAM,
perceived value is one of the most important predictor of m-com-
merce adoption, and this is followed by performance expectancy,
social influence, effort expectancy, age, perceived enjoyment, per-
sonal innovativeness, and education.

The independent and dependent variables used in this study are 3.5. Neural network analysis
adapted from Lu et al. (2005), Wei et al. (2009) , Vanketesh et al.
(2003) and Thong et al. (2006). The demographic variables were This research employs a multilayer perceptron training algo-
measured in terms of gender, age and educational level. All rithm to train the neural network. In order to prevent overfitting

Table 1
Principle component analysis.

Constructs Items Factor loadings range % of Variance Eigenvalues

Trust 6 0.762–0.856 33.417 11.028
Performance expectancy 4 0.806–0.887 14.620 4.824
Effort expectancy 4 0.848–0.927 9.968 3.289
Perceived value 4 0.789– 0.814 6.524 2.153
Perceived enjoyment 4 0.687–0.842 5.865 1.935
Personal innovativeness 4 0.771–0.824 4.937 1.629
Facilitating conditions 4 0.816–0.876 3.962 1.307
Social influence 3 0.817–0.834 3.518 1.161
 A. Y.-L. Chong / Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530 527

Table 2 Table 3
Multiple regression analysis. RMSE for the neural networks.

Constructs B Significance VIF Tolerance Network Training Testing

Trust 0.078 0.133 0.597 1.675 1 0.301 0.294
Performance expectancy 0.241 <0.01 0.533 1.809 2 0.312 0.324
Effort expectancy 0.114 0.016 0.666 1.502 3 0.298 0.316
Perceived value 0.491 <0.01 0.441 2.269 4 0.288 0.276
Perceived enjoyment 0.116 0.026 0.535 1.869 5 0.345 0.264
Personal innovativeness 0.129 0.021 0.465 2.150 6 0.276 0.354
Facilitating conditions 0.012 0.770 0.851 1.175 7 0.316 0.343
Social influence 0.239 <0.01 0.726 1.378 8 0.304 0.324
Education 0.122 0.047 0.390 2.563 9 0.276 0.278
Age 0.139 0.015 0.457 2.188 10 0.294 0.289
Gender 0.001 0.974 0.924 1.082 Average 0.301 0.306
Standard deviation 0.020 0.030
R2 = 0.817, RMSE = 0.564.

of the model, cross validations is applied. There is no heuristic for Table 4

determining the hidden nodes in a neural network (Sexton et al., Sensitivity analysis.
2002). Hence, a preliminary network was examined using 1–10 Variable Relative importance
hidden nodes. This approach is similar to the approaches applied
Perceived value 1.000
by Sexton et al. (2002), Morris et al. (2004) and Wang and Elhag Performance expectancy 0.542
(2007). The accuracy of the model was measured using the Root Social influence 0.392
Mean Square Error (RMSE) over ten validations. Networks with five Trust 0.388
hidden nodes were found to be complex enough to map the data- Perceived ease of use 0.320
Age 0.311
sets without incurring additional errors to the neural network Perceived enjoyment 0.291
model. The input layer consists of the 11 predictors and the output Education 0.262
layer consists of one output variable (i.e. m-commerce adoption). Personal innovativeness 0.234
Fig. 2 shows a typical network for this study. Facilitating condition 0.147
Gender 0.131
A ten-fold cross validation was performed where whereby 90
percent of the data was used as the training net, while the remain-
ing 10 percent was used to measure the prediction accuracy of the
trained network. Table 3 shows the RMSE for the neural network. adoption. Based on the neural network analyses, perceived value is
The neural network results here showed that the neural net- the most significant predictor of m-commerce adoption, followed
work models have a much lower RMSE when compared to the mul- by performance expectancy, social influence, trust, perceived ease
tiple regression model. The average RMSE of neural network model of use, age, perceived enjoyment, education, personal innovative-
is 0.301 for training data, 0.306 for testing data, while multiple ness, facilitating condition and gender.
regression model’s RMSE is 0.564. This shows that the neural net-
work model which is non-linear generates a better fit and forecast 4. Discussion
of the data than the regression analysis, and that the neural net-
work model is able to capture more sophisticated non-linear inte- Based on the findings, the neural network model is able to offer a
grating effects in consumer m-commerce adoption decisions. more accurate prediction of the determinants of m-commerce
Sensitivity analysis performance was then computed by averag- adoption. Although the extended UTAUT model was explained quite
ing the importance of the input variables in predicting the output well by the regression model given that majority of the variables
for the ten networks (see Table 4). The importance of a predictor is and significant, and the model was able to explain approximately
a measure of how much the network’s model-predicted value 80 percent of the variance in behavioural intention to adopt m-com-
changes for different values of the predictors. The normalized merce. However, the neural network analysis has a better model fit,
importance values were found from dividing the importance val- and was able to capture both the linear and non-linear relationships
ues by the largest importance value, expressed as a percentage. between the predictors and m-commerce adoption. The neural
The neural network is able to capture non-linear relationships network model also showed that not all m-commerce adoption
between trust, gender and facilitating conditions and m-commerce decisions are based on compensatory decisions.

Fig. 2. Network architecture.

528 A. Y.-L. Chong / Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530
The four original variables (e.g. performance expectancy, effort
expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions) in UTAUT
are found to have significant determinant of m-commerce adop-
tion. Performance expectancy is the second most important predic-
tor of m-commerce adoption. Performance expectancy is one of the
most important predictor of information systems adoption based
on the meta analysis of information systems adoption research
by Jeyaraj et al. (2006). Furthermore, the TAM and UTAUT models
have consistently verified its importance. Therefore the finding
here supports those from previous researchers such as Wei et al.
(2009), Thong et al. (2006) and Venkatesh et al. (2003). Although
effort expectancy is one of the most important variable in the
TAM and subsequently the UTAUT model, its importance in m-
commerce adoption prediction is less than that of performance
expectancy. It is ranked as the firth most important predictor in
this study and is outperformed by other additional variables to
the original UTAUT model. Social influence plays an important part
in m-commerce adoption as found by studies conducted by Chong
et al. (2011) and Wei et al. (2009). Mobile devices such as iPhones
and iPad for example, are now seen not only a device, but also a
sign of trend when consumers adopt it (Wei et al., 2009). Thus con-
sumers are very likely to be influenced by their peers, family, and
the media. Coupled with the network effects of m-commerce appli-
cations whereby some of the applications become more useful
when there are more users, social influence becomes even more
prominent as users will try to encourage people they know to
adopt the applications (Chong et al., 2010). Facilitating conditions
although is found to be important, it is ranked as the least impor-
tant predictor among all the predictors. Although the regression
model found that facilitating condition has no significant relation-
ships with m-commerce adoption, the neural network is able to
capture its importance. Nevertheless, it shows that unlike organi-
zation information systems, m-commerce as a consumer informa-
tion system does not require much facility conditions. The
resources, knowledge, compatibility and ability to get help from
others have a less prominent role in technologies such as m-com-
merce as providers and application developers have designed
m-commerce for general users, and therefore most consumers
can access it easily. Furthermore, as there is a large population
using mobile technologies in China, it will be easy for consumers
to seek help from others when they encountered difficulties in
using m-commerce.
The four additional variables in this study are perceived value,
trust, perceived enjoyment and personal innovativeness. Perceived
value is found to be the most significant predictor of m-commerce
adoption. This shows when studying consumer information sys-
tems such as m-commerce, UTAUT model may not be able to cap-
ture all the decision considerations of the consumers as consumers
need to pay for the use of information systems. Researchers such as
Chong et al. (2011) have stated that cost is not an important deter-
minant of m-commerce adoption. However, unlike the study by
Chong et al. (2011), this study has adopted the approach by Kim
et al. (2007), and examined instead the perceived value of consum-
ers. Therefore although the price of devices such as smartphones
and wireless connections fees may be declining, these will not
influence consumers’ willingness to adopt m-commerce if they
find that the value offer by m-commerce does not outweigh the
monetary sacrifices by them.
Trust is an additional variable added to the UTAUT model, and is
found to be an important predictor of m-commerce. Previous re-
sults from Chong et al. (2010) and Chong, Ooi, Lin, and Bao
(2012) have found that trust is not significant in determining the
adoption of m-commerce and 3G. Similarly, the initial result from
the regression model also suggested that trust is not a significant
predictor of m-commerce. However, as mentioned earlier,
those studies have assumed that consumers’ decisions to adopt
m-commerce is based on a linear and compensatory model. The re-
sult here suggests that there is a non-linear relationship between
trust and m-commerce adoption, and trust is an important consid-
eration when consumers are deciding whether to adopt/not adopt
m-commerce.
Unlike organizational information systems, consumers may
interact with m-commerce for entertainment purposes. This is
one of the main reasons why applications such as WeiXin, RenRen,
and Youku are among the most popular mobile applications by
Chinese consumers, as they offer users entertainment (Leong,
Ooi, Chong, & Lin, 2011). Therefore the extended UTAUT shows that
perceived entertainment will determine consumers’ m-commerce
adoption, and this is supported by studies conducted by Wei
et al. (2009). Lu et al. (2005) stated that the influence of personal
innovativeness does not have a strong relationship with m-com-
merce adoption, and suggested that future studies should include
variables such as security and cost. However, as stated earlier, neu-
ral network analyses the model as a non-compensatory decision
model, therefore personal innovativeness may not be offset by
other variables such as cost and trust as suggested by Lu et al.
(2005).
The three demographic variables used in this study are educa-
tion, age, and gender. Age is the most important predictor of m-
commerce adoption, followed by education and gender. The
regression model in this research showed that those who are youn-
ger are more likely to adopt m-commerce, as well as those who
have higher educational level. Gender however, was found to be
non-significant in predicting m-commerce adoption. Nevertheless,
the neural network model shows that all three demographic vari-
ables are important, although gender is found to be the least
important predictor of m-commerce adoption. This result contra-
dicts those found by Chong et al. (2011). However, the findings
from neural network model shows that it may be important to con-
sider these variables when doing market segmentations, and fur-
ther investigations using non-linear approaches may provide
more insights into the demographic profiles of m-commerce
adopters/non adopters.
5. Conclusion and implications
This research extended UTAUT to examine the predictors of m-
commerce adoption. Variables such as trust, perceived value, per-
sonal innovativeness, and perceived enjoyment were added to
the model, as well as the demographic profiles of users. Predictive
analytical approach of neural network was used to examine the
data, and the results from the data were used to compare with
the ones from regression analysis. The neural network model out-
performed the regression model, and was able to show the impor-
tance of all predictors which was not identified by the regression
model. There are several implications from this research.
Firstly, this study extended the UTAUT model by examining it in
a consumer information system context. M-commerce is one of the
fast growing consumer information systems, and it is important to
study the factors that can predict its successful adoption. The ex-
tended UTAUT was able to explain m-commerce adoption well,
and shows that other relevant variables such as perceived value
and trust play a more important role than the original UTAUT
variables.
Secondly, this research addressed the call from Shmueli and
Koppius (2010), and employed neural network to examine the re-
search model. Neural network technique was able to perform bet-
ter than the regression model. Furthermore, it shows the
relationships between the predictors and adoption decision may
not necessarily be compensatory and linear. Therefore future tech-
nology adoption research may employ similar techniques to better
understand consumer technology adoption decisions.
 A. Y.-L. Chong / Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 523–530
Thirdly, this research has also examined the adoption of
m-commerce in the Chinese market. China has one of the largest
consumer markets for m-commerce, and the market is still at a
growing stage at a rapid pace. The results will therefore be useful
to m-commerce providers and researchers to understand con-
sumer behaviour in m-commerce from the perspective of Chinese
consumer.
Fourthly, the results from this research will be useful to m-com-
merce and telecommunication providers to formulate appropriate
business strategies. For example, studies in the past by Chong et al.
(2011) have stated that cost may not be significant as mobile de-
vices and connections are becoming affordable to the Chinese con-
sumers. However, our result shows that instead of looking at the
price of connections such as 3G and mobile phones, providers
should be focused on the values which m-commerce applications
can offer. Therefore although the cost of downloading an m-com-
merce application may be low, consumers are not likely to pay
for it if they cannot see the value in the applications. This can also
explain why applications such as WeiXin managed to grow their
consumer base to 100 million users in less than one and a half year.
Applications such as WeiXin allow users to connect to other users
based on their locations, and share voice, video and text messages
with people in their network. Thus such applications offer high va-
lue to the users as well as entertainment. Other important consid-
erations such as ensuring that the applications are useful, easy to
use, and secured should not be ignored as well as they also deter-
mine consumers’ m-commerce adoption decision.
Lastly, the results show that demographic profiles of consumers
are important predictors of m-commerce adoption. Together with
the results that support consumers’ personal innovativeness and
m-commerce adoption, this research can help decision makers to
formulate relevant personalize strategies to target the relevant
consumers. From the results, it is shown that younger consumers
are more likely to use m-commerce than older consumers. There-
fore more efforts should be put in to target older consumers, such
as educating them on the value of m-commerce applications, or
providing more assistance to this group of consumers when they
purchase their smart phones or register to 3G connections. Similar
approaches can be conducted for those who have lower
educational level. Men are also found to be more willing to adopt
m-commerce than women. Therefore m-commerce application
developers may want to consider designing applications that will
attract female consumers.
6. Limitations
The first limitation of this study is that the data is relatively
small. Although the online survey was posted to popular social
media websites in China, the responses was quite slow. Future
study can consider distributing the survey to consumers such as
those conducted by Chong et al. (2012). Secondly, the data col-
lected here is from Chinese consumers. Although the Chinese mar-
ket is one of the largest m-commerce markets, the extended
UTAUT model maybe limited in its generalizability to consumers
in other countries. Therefore further examination is needed to col-
lect data from other countries. Lastly, this study only focused on
behavioural intention of m-commerce. Future studies can focus
on consumers’ continuance usage of m-commerce.
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