<p>There are many studies on the rate of <em>adoption</em> and <em>diffusion</em> of technologies. Are there any papers (preferably empirical ones) on the <strong>utilization</strong> of technology? What I mean by "utilization" is whether a technology is employed to its fullest potential. For example, using a smart-phone to just make phone calls would be <em>under-utilization</em>, because many other features offered by the smart-phone are not utilized.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-19T06:45:09.523Z
A potential issue: how to define rigorously the concept of *utilization* of technology? E.g. the smartphone is not an homogeneous product. You have many different varieties of smartphones with different features and so different possible utilization. Its utilization may also depend on many external factors: how many users? Which plan do you have? Is wifi available? How many apps?
emeryville
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-19T18:04:45.057Z
@emeryville: I agree with you that measuring technology utilization is going to be a challenging task. But even studies based on partial and imperfect measures would be useful in understanding of how fully technology utilized. Perhaps a very crude way to start measuring the utilization of smartphones would be to ask people how much of their smartphone usage is the basic phone feature, and how much is the extended PDA feature.
Herr K.
<reference-request>
Reference request on utilization of technology
Herr K.
# Reference request on utilization of technology

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-11-19)

There are many studies on the rate of *adoption* and *diffusion* of technologies. Are there any papers (preferably empirical ones) on the **utilization** of technology? What I mean by "utilization" is whether a technology is employed to its fullest potential. For example, using a smart-phone to just make phone calls would be *under-utilization*, because many other features offered by the smart-phone are not utilized.

**Tags:** reference-request

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: A potential issue: how to define rigorously the concept of *utilization* of technology? E.g. the smartphone is not an homogeneous product. You have many different varieties of smartphones with different features and so different possible utilization. Its utilization may also depend on many external factors: how many users? Which plan do you have? Is wifi available? How many apps?  
> **username_0**: @username_1: I agree with you that measuring technology utilization is going to be a challenging task. But even studies based on partial and imperfect measures would be useful in understanding of how fully technology utilized. Perhaps a very crude way to start measuring the utilization of smartphones would be to ask people how much of their smartphone usage is the basic phone feature, and how much is the extended PDA feature.  

---

## 0 answers

