Development and validation of a technology acceptance model for safety-enhancing, wearable locating systems

Events of disasters on passenger ships can never be completely excluded while numbers of passengers on cruises are continuously increasing. Innovations in ubiquitous and networked computing such as wearable locating systems for passengers could enable faster muster and more efficient search for missing people. As the safety enhancement depends on the effective usage of these technologies, passengers’ acceptance is crucial, though largely unknown, and infrastructure implies high costs for shipping companies. In order to investigate passengers’ acceptance, a context-specific technology acceptance model was developed based on a literature review and qualitative interviews with passengers. The model was validated by an online survey with 2086 passengers aged between 16 and 81 years. The context-specific factors social influence, expected usefulness, trust, privacy concern, and perceived security risk explain 95% of the variance in the target variable intention to use locating systems with social influence as the strongest predictor. The context-specific factors are most determined by the passenger characteristics age and need for safety. In conclusion, the model presents insights into the relationships between passenger characteristics and context-specific factors enabling systematic interventions to increase acceptance for locating systems and, thereby, contributes to enhance safety for the occurrence of an evacuation.