Mapping unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) 2: a taxonomical study using bibliometric visualisation

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the research pattern and growth trends of published research on a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) from 2012 to 2019. The study also examines the research scope of UTAUT2 for future researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

This study has adopted a bibliometric approach followed by a structured literature review analysis to synthesize the research on UTAUT2 since 2012. In total, 163 documents were analyzed for type of studies, theories and frameworks, methodologies, author wise collaboration, organizations that contributed to the body of knowledge in the UTAUT2 research and journals that published studies in this domain. VOSviewer and Tableau were used for the data visualization, whereas TCCM, which means theory (T), context (C), characteristics (C) and methodology (M) framework is used to propose the future research directions.

Findings

The findings reveal research on UTAUT2 is growing. The structured literature analysis of the top 15 cited articles further analyzed the parsimony of new models in detail. In addition, the study highlights the inception by and promoters of UTAUT2 in a separate section. The data for this study was collected by searching the title, abstract and keywords of documents in the Scopus database.

Research limitations/implications

This study is based on research papers, published in the UTAUT2 research area, that have been extracted from the Scopus database by keywords only. Future studies can also perform a meta-analysis of various clusters generated by bibliometric analysis.

Practical implications

This study is useful for practitioners to devise strategies for increasing technology acceptance, adoption and utilization in the times to come.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the very few and early studies, which examined patterns and growth trends of the UTAUT2 studies with the TCCM framework, to suggest scope for future research studies.