The Role of Resistance to Change in Software Updates’ Impact on Information Systems Continuance

Although software updates are pervasively used by providers to enhance their software’s functionalities over time, our understanding of the influence of such changes in the IT artifact on users’ post-adoption beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions is still limited. Moreover, potential divergent reactions to software updates emanating from users’ individual differences have received little research attention so far. Drawing on the IS continuance model and theory of resistance to change, we investigate whether and how feature updates differentially affect the continuance intentions of users that are more vs less resistant to change. In a vignette-based online experiment with 149 participants, we find a positive effect of feature updates on the continuance intentions of less change resistant-users, although the effect disappears for more change-resistant users. A moderated mediation analysis reveals positive disconfirmation as mediating mechanism that is contingent on users’ resistance to change. Implications for research and practice as well as directions for future research are discussed