Acceptance and Use of Interactive Digital TV Services by Citizens

The article develops a microsimulation model of use behaviour in an interactive context made available by innovative Digital TV (DTV) services. The impact on Italian citizens, their behaviours during the early adoption phase and the main conditions for the optimal use of services are the variables investigated in this study. The final goal is to explore implications of possible strategic measures, hence to envisage the effects of policy actions in a given operational context. The present study is carried out using a multidisciplinary approach. A dataset derived from a field study developed in the Italian T-government project 'DTT Job Channel' is used in the analysis, with the objective of studying diffusion paths of new interactive services. In the mentioned project a DTV service was developed to provide support especially to young people in finding a job. A sample of about 400 residential users was involved in the field study. The ICT predicting model of user acceptance UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) is applied to pre-process the data to feed the microsimulation model. Under given policy conditions, the model generates different scenarios of use behaviour. Final results show that these scenarios are directly influenced by the decisions made about DTV interactive service design, the informative campaign and the support given to the residential population.