A Qualitative Study on Factors Influencing Technology Adoption in the Architecture Industry

Abstract

The architecture service industry has typically been slow in accepting new digital technologies due to many reasons, such as the industry’s complexity, the diverse sizes of companies, client types, and stakeholders’ technical skills. The combination of these business service factors with those that affect the intention of a user to use a technology offers a novel model for predicting the success of technology adoption in this business. This study aims to identify the factors in the architecture industry that influence the process of technology adoption. The process of qualitative data collection was conducted using semi-structured interviews with the participation of 30 architecture and design managers to explore the factors that they consider important when adopting digital technology in their organizations. This was conducted to compare these factors with those identified by users as influential in the adoption of digital technology. The analysis was conducted in three stages, namely transcribing, coding, and extracting major themes. This study will further help in identifying whether managers viewed the factors identified in the quantitative study as significant in affecting their decisions to adopt the technology. The major findings of this study revealed that several factors influence the adoption of technology in the architecture industry at the managerial level. These factors include cost, brief preparation, service quality, result demonstrability, project time, environmental considerations, training considerations, and user-friendliness.

Keywords

• sustainable buildings
• emerging technologies
• architecture industry
• technology adoption
• productive work