Textile and Apparel Industries

Perceived Cost of New Technology Adoption: Scale Development in the Context of Chinese Textile and Apparel Firm Managers

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Abstract

The textile and apparel (T&A) industry has been fundamentally changed due to technology development. However, the rates of new technology adoption vary. Industry practitioners point out that the development of the T&A industry in developing country (e.g., China) is low cost-driven. Thus, a low cost in new technology adoption would lead to a high motivation to adopt new technologies. However, there is limited scale to measure firm managers’ perceived cost of new technology adoption. To build the scale, a scale development process using the psychometric method, namely Item Response Theory (IRT), was conducted. After item generation, item bank development, and item psychometric property evaluation by 599 Chinese T&A firm managers, a 8-item scale of perceived cost was created. In this scale, money, time, workload, employees’ and managers’ mental pressure related to new technology adoption were highlighted.

Keywords: Perceived Cost

How to Cite:

Wang, B. & Ha-Brookshire, J. E., (2019) “Perceived Cost of New Technology Adoption: Scale Development in the Context of Chinese Textile and Apparel Firm Managers”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 76(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.8423