Status quo bias in information system adoption: a meta-analytic review

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the influence of status quo on information system (IS) adoption. Organizations often substantially allocate resources to leverage existing IT investments. The incumbent system deployment and the institutional environment will exert the influence on the new IS adoption of firms. The findings provide insights for explaining why firms conservatively react toward an emerging IT innovation.

The research design of the present study is consisted of the following steps. First, the related theoretical foundations of system adoption are reviewed for constructing the research framework. Second, based on the status quo bias theory, this study proposes a conceptual model. Third, the research data set was constructed through collecting manuscripts by conducting journal-by-journal searching in electronic databases. Finally, the protocol proposed by Lipsey and Wilson (2001) was used to conduct the meta-analysis.

Through a meta-analysis with 34 published studies, this study provides three observations. First, the results provide supports for the magnitude and significance of proposed relationships. Second, the relationships between status quo factors, expectations, and IS adoption are indeed related. Third, the considerable variability across effect sizes can be attributed to the type of adoption, the type of focal system, and the type of institutional pressures.

Although the meta-analytic results provide supports for the significance and magnitude of proposed relationships, the follow-up manuscripts searching and further analyses are needed.

This research presents a collective understanding of systems adoption from status quo bias perspective. The findings provide insights for further researches on IS adoption.