A quantitative study of information technology professionals' perceptions on adopting biometric technology

The problem addressed in this study is the unexpectedly slow adoption of biometric technology. The need for information technology resources has increased tremendously and organizations have become dependent on this resource for their business success. Unfortunately, the increased need for information technology resources has also brought an increase in security vulnerabilities. Organizations are attempting to combat the increased vulnerabilities with emerging technologies such as biometric technology that are an improvement over traditional security authentication technologies such as PIN numbers, passwords, and access cards. However, although biometric technology offers improved security, the adoption of this emerging technology has been unexpectedly slow. One reason hypothesized in this study is that the perceptions of information technology professionals have a significant influence on the adoption of biometric technology. This phenomenon was investigated in this study using the technology acceptance model, the theory of reasoned action, and the theory of planned behavior. 139 IT professionals that had at least 3 years IT experience and were at least18 years of age took part in the internet based survey to address the hypotheses of the study. The results show that there is a significant relationship between IT professionals' perception of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social subjective norms, and behavioral intentions to adopt biometric technology. These results were mated with previous studies and trends that indicate the importance of IT professionals in strategic IT decisions in organizations, illustrating that there is a high probability that IT professionals influence organization decision makers and may in fact be the root cause of the slow adoption of biometric technology. The implications of the findings of this study may be critical to how decisions are made concerning the adoption of emerging technologies such as biometric technology. IT decision makers should understand that while IT professionals are important in making IT decisions their perceptions may influence their decisions on biometric adoption.