Contextual resources and digital attitudes (CResDA) supporting technology acceptance: measurement and conceptual validation

The success of digital transformation depends in part on employees’ attitudes towards technology (digital attitudes) and how supportive the organisational context is for digital change (workplace contextual resources). Previous digital attitude measures suffer from conceptual overlap and do not consider the role of contextual resources in shaping attitudes which means that research and practice may not be fully capturing the complexity of factors influencing digital attitudes within digital change contexts. This paper creates and validates a new comprehensive measure of Contextual Resources and Digital Attitudes (CResDA). Conceptual validation was conducted with experts in digital transformation, generating an item bank for CResDA. Two samples of employees (N = 1108) going through digital transformation were recruited using Prolific Academic and completed the survey at two time points. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that CResDA consists of six digital attitudes – Win-Win Mindset, No-Win Mindset, Fixed Digital Mindset, Technology Competence, Trust in Technology, and Personal Innovativeness – and four contextual resources – Team Support, Line Manager Support, Change Leadership Support, and Organisational Support. CResDA exhibited good psychometric properties, predictive validity, and minimal risk-of-bias. This work contributes to previous literature by providing a multi-level measure of contextual resources and refining/synthesising digital attitude concepts for predicting technology acceptance in digital transformation.