Why IT systems for emergency response get rejected: Examining responders' attitude to IT

Emergency responders' attitude to IT is marked by resistance, aversity, and rejection. This attitude is specific to IT alone and does not extend to technology in general. Current research on the topic only presents partial, scattered, and unconnected accounts that do not provide a starting point on how to tackle the rejection. The available models for technology acceptance are also too general and do not take into account the specifics of the emergency response domain. Through extensive user research combined with a grounded theory approach, this paper identifies twelve problem areas from which responders' negative attitude towards IT arises. By extending the technology acceptance models with this new knowledge, we provide system designers with an understanding of what to tackle and tune in their IT system designs so that a positive attitude among emergency responders can be achieved.