Impact of personal innovativeness, perceived smartphone ease of use and mobile self-efficacy on smartphone-based personal information management practices

Purpose Although, smartphones have facilitated users to keep their personal information, nonetheless, less has been investigated about factors affecting personal information management (PIM) practices. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how personal innovativeness, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and mobile self-efficacy affect PIM (e.g. finding/re-finding, keeping, organizing and maintaining) practices. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative research design was used in this study. The authors collected data from 222 students of information management from public sector universities using a questionnaire. PLS modeling technique was used to analyze data. Findings The authors noted that personal innovativeness significantly impacts finding/refinding information, whereas it insignificantly affects keeping, organizing and maintaining information practices. In addition, smartphone PEOU significantly influences information finding and refinding, information keeping and organizing information, whereas insignificantly influences information maintaining. Moreover, mobile self-efficacy was noted to be significantly associated with finding and refinding information, information keeping, information organizing and information maintaining. Originality/value This research is an important contribution to the body of existing literature, as it proposed an integrated model based on constructs extracted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Social Cognitive Theory, personal innovativeness and PIM. This study also has practical significance because the findings of this study would be helpful for smartphone application developers and LIS school directors to design programs for information literacy.