User resistance to information system implementations: A dual mode processing perspective

Users often resist information system implementations and it has been established that this can cause an implementation to fail. In this paper, the user attitudes that can cause resistance are examined using an established attitude change theory from social and cognitive psychology: the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). It is argued that users who cannot or will not think deeply about systems represent a key blockage and that their attitudes are largely based not on a system's intended benefits or other central issues but on heuristics and what ELM calls peripheral influences. The results of a wide-ranging study are presented that, in addition to supporting this argument, identifies and classifies 19 new heuristics and peripheral influences (in addition to the nine already known) that commonly, and adversely, affect user attitudes and responses to new information system implementations.