Understanding the influence of anticipated emotions on personal devices adoption and usage

Anticipated emotions, the prediction about the emotional consequences of a behavior, have been acknowledged as strong drivers of consumer choices. Despite that, their influence on technologies adoption and usage has not been explored in research yet. This study takes the challenge by investigating the effect of both positive and negative anticipated emotions on attitude, and in its turn intention to use personal electronic devices. Further, it investigates the drivers of such emotions, namely purposive value, usability, monetary value, social enhancement, interpersonal interconnectivity, entertainment value and self-discovery value. A survey on 270 subjects is conducted, where emotional and cognitive responses are examined in the context of both novel and familiar personal devices to the consumer. The moderation role of product nature, functional versus hedonic, is explored as well. Findings demonstrate the ability of anticipated emotions to influence consumers’ attitude and intention toward personal devices adoption and use. Further, they show that value perceptions vary greatly between novel and familiar products and affect anticipated positive and negative emotions differently.