The impact of self-efficacy on accountants’ behavioral intention to adopt and use accounting information systems

Digitalization increasingly affects the accounting profession as it engages with pervasive technologically enabled systems that support business processes and financial management. Given these systems commonly result in less than voluntary use, mandating compliance is challenging. In this context, it is important to understand the attitudes of prospective users, as their negativity may waste resources through ambivalence, frustration, and under-use. Our study of Libyan accountants shows that in adopting a mandated technologically enabled accounting information system, they were influenced by a range of perceptional, dispositional, and environmental factors. By combining components of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology with institutional theory, results show that 63.4 percent of the variance regarding behavioral intention is attributable to self-efficacy, effort expectancy, coercive, and mimetic pressures. Our findings confirming the significance of self-efficacy and disconfirming experience support calls to consider the influence of self-efficacy upon the use of restrictive decision aids.