The term “digital natives” was introduced in 2001 to describe a generation that has grown up surrounded by technology and the internet. The accompanying claims of a new way of thinking among digital ...natives were influential in shaping educational policy. Still, they were challenged by research that found no evidence of generation-wide cognitive changes in learners. Yet, the digital natives narrative persists in popular media and the education discourse. This study set out to investigate the reasons for the persistence of the digital native myth. It analyzed the metadata from 1886 articles related to the term between 2001 and 2022 using bibliometric methods and structural topic modeling. The results show that the concept of “digital native” is still both warmly embraced and fiercely criticized by scholars mostly from western and high income countries, and the volume of research on the topic is growing. However, the results suggest that what appears as the persistence of the idea is actually evolution and complete reinvention: The way the “digital native” concept is operationalized has shifted over time through a series of (metaphorical) mutations. The concept of digital native is one (albeit a highly successful) mutation of the generational gap discourse dating back to the early 1900s. While the initial digital native literature relied on Prensky's unvalidated claims and waned upon facing empirical challenges, subsequent versions have sought more nuanced interpretations. Notably, a burgeoning third mutation now co-opts the “digital native” terminology for diverse purposes, often completely decoupled from the foundational literature and its critiques. This study explains the concept's persistence as dynamic evolution of the digital native discourse in contemporary academic and public spheres.
•First topic model analysis of digital native (DN) literature.•The concept of DN is both embraced and criticized by scholars.•The meaning of DN has changed over the years.•The research on DN is dominated by western and high-income countries.
•Uncover the impact mechanism of gamification on impulse purchase intention.•Reveal the mediation effects of Enjoyment and social interaction.•Set up the boundary condition of gender and age on ...gamification influences.
While gamification has emerged as one of the most promising futuristic trends in e-commerce, how it impacts consumers’ impulse buying behavior remains largely underexplored. This study develops a theoretical model to examine the impacts of two gamification mechanisms on impulse buying during the “Double Eleven” shopping festival. A survey was conducted and 558 valid questionnaires were collected from consumers using Taobao or Tmall platforms in China. Structural equation modeling method was used to examine our research model. Our empirical results suggest that rewards giving and badges upgrading gamification mechanisms are positively associated with perceived enjoyment and social interaction, which in turn strongly influence consumers’ impulse buying. Moreover, a multi-group analysis and an importance-performance matrix analysis demonstrate that the relative influences of the two gamification mechanisms are contingent upon gender and age. Our study provides new insights into the role of gamification in influencing consumer buying behavior in the online marketplace. It also highlights several antecedents of consumers’ impulse buying during arguably the largest e-commerce shopping festival in the world.
•Nonage-based criteria were used to study digital natives and digital immigrants.•An integrated framework of technology use has been tested across DNs and DIs.•Three postadoption mechanisms have been ...used to study the continue use behavior.•The postadoption mechanisms are sequential belief updating, feedback, and habit.•Results of multigroup analysis explain the postadoption behavioral differences of DNs and DIs.
Although the information systems (IS) literature has revealed a variety of mechanisms involved in technology adoption and postadoption use, the literature lacks insights about how individuals with different usage characteristics process the information related to new IS and how their belief judgments and use behavior unfold over time. This study fills this void in the literature by conceptualizing and testing a comprehensive model to investigate the impact of user orientation toward technology use by digital natives (DNs) and digital immigrants (DIs) on technology continuous use behavior. The effect of DNs and DIs is currently gaining the attention of researchers. This study investigated the postadoption and use behavior of these groups using a three-wave panel model and with decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) as the initial adoption model. The longitudinal model is a unified framework that sheds light on four different mechanisms underlying postadoption phenomena: (1) the belief judgment evaluation processes suggested by the DTPB model, (2) sequential updating mechanism, (3) feedback mechanism, and (4) habit mechanism. Based on multigroup analysis, we show that a clear pattern of differences in effect exists between DNs and DIs with respect to the sequential belief updating mechanism and that these results are relatively stable over time.
Abstract
Consumers use increasingly Near Field Communication mobile payment to buy products and services. However, the adoption of NFC mobile payment varies by individual attributes of consumers. ...This paper aims to study the generational differences in mobile payment acceptance based on the theory of generational cohorts and technology acceptance. Therefore, a research concept and hypotheses were developed. The research methodology included an online survey among Generation Z (digital natives) and X (digital immigrants). A sample of 580 respondents had been analyzed with multi-group Structural Equation Modeling. The comparative analysis revealed that digital immigrants were more influenced by the perceived ease of use, subjective norms, and financial risk of NFC mobile payment. In turn, digital natives intended to use NFC mobile payment to a greater extent if they perceived mobile payment as compatible with their lifestyle. Our research contributes to the understanding of generational patterns of mobile payment acceptance.
This study examined the digital native–digital immigrant dichotomy based on the results of a study involving 1095 teachers from two states in the southeastern United States. The study focused on age ...as it relates to the relationship between the type of mobile phone they owned, their support for the use of mobile phones in the classroom, their perceptions of the benefits of specific mobile features for school-related work, and their perceptions of instructional barriers. The results indicated that the age of the teacher matters, however, not as suggested by Prensky (2001). There were no significant differences in the findings for the teachers who were less than 32 and the ones who were 33–49; however, they both significantly differed from those over 50 in mobile phone ownership and support for the use of mobile phones in the classroom as well as in their perceptions regarding the useful mobile features for school-related work and instructional barriers. In each instance, the older teachers were less likely to own smartphones, were less supportive on all items, were less enthusiastic about the features, and found the barriers to be more problematic.
•Teachers over 50 are less likely to own smartphones.•Teachers over 50 are less supportive of using mobile phones in the classroom.•Teachers over 50 are less fervent about the usefulness of mobile phone features.•Teachers over 50 perceive barriers to mobile phone use more problematic.
How do organizations develop and manage employees' data analytics skills to create business value and enhance organizational competitive advantage? In order to address this prominent and critical ...research question for IS research, we conceptualize and operationalize data analytics skills at the individual level and develop a nomological network model to examine its critical antecedents and outcomes from the lens of adaptation structuration theory. We test our core proposition and research model using survey data collected from 258 frontline employees of three data-intensive research institutes in China. We discover that data-driven culture, data analytics affordance, and individual absorptive capacity are positively associated with employees' data analytics skills, which in turn, have positive influences on their task and innovative performance. We classify the employees into digital immigrants and digital natives based on age and examine the different influences of three salient antecedents on data analytics skills between the two groups. The research findings suggest that data-driven culture plays a more significant role in driving data analytics skills for digital immigrants, while data analytics affordance exhibits a stronger influence on data analytics skills for digital natives.
This study explored how social norms around digital immigrants' tablet adoption affect their new technology use using expanded social influence measures, including three types of social norms and ...subculture variables, along with the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) variables. We found that social influence took a different role from UTAUT variables in predicting digital immigrants' tablet adoption before and after a four-week community workshop - tablet training. Subjective norms (before training) and injunctive norms and subculture (following training) were significant determinants of intentions to use tablets while intention to use tablets (before training) and effort expectancy (before and after training) significantly predicted actual tablet use. Findings underscore that positively perceived social norms around digital immigrants as new technology adopters can increase their intention to use new technology, however, expected difficulties in using tablets are still impeding their adoption even when their actual knowledge of tablets improves overall.
PDF
