The Determinants of RFID Use and Its Benefits in Hospitals: An Empirical Study Examining Beyond Adoption

Going beyond traditional 'adoption', this study examines the determinants of the 'use' of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and identifies the perceived benefits of such use. From extant literature, we developed a research model from organizational setting (i.e., hospitals), which we validated using survey data from 142 healthcare organizations. The collected data were analyzed by partial-least-squares (PLS) methods. The results show that a hospital's RFID use is influenced by the following technological organizational-environmental (TOE) factors: information privacy (technology), absorptive capacity and resource readiness (organization), and coercive pressure (environment). RFID use, in turn, impacts both economic and operational benefits. Additionally, size of hospital found to be an important control variable to RFID use. Therefore we further investigated the combined effect of hospital size and RFID use on perceived benefits (i.e., the moderation effect). The results showed that hospital size has moderating effect on the relationship between RFID use and economic benefits, but not between RFID use and operational benefits. The implications, particularly from the perspective of a healthcare setting, have been discussed.